Knowledge exchange, foster care and early education: Introducing treasure baskets to foster carers of young children

Funding information UCL Innovation and Enterprise HEIF Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Funding Abstract All children have a right to early childhood education, but preschool-aged fostered children are less likely than others to access formal early childhood education and care (ECEC) services such as nurseries and playgroups. The home learning environment is crucial for this group. Building on an earlier pilot study where foster carers of young children saw education as something that largely happens outside the home, this paper presents a knowledge exchange project that aimed to build foster carers' self-concept as educators. The design of the project aimed to exchange knowledge between academic researchers and practitioners through an experientially based training programme, which focused on extending the specific ECEC practice of treasure baskets. The programme was theoretically grounded in social pedagogy, which takes an educative approach to social issues. Although there were clear difficulties in recruitment, there were promising signs that the knowledge exchange dialogic approach promoted the acquisition of new knowledge and skills and enhanced foster carers' sense of self-confidence as educators for the young children they look after.

children are encouraged to 'enjoy their interests, develop confidence in their skills' (Department of Education, 2011, p. 19). The standards discuss the role of fostering services in terms of carers they supervise, 'promoting', 'supporting', 'helping', 'advocating for', and 'monitoring' children's education including preschool education (Department of Education, 2011, p. 20). Guidance to evidence foster carers' attainment of training standards uses the terminology of 'supporting educational potential' (Department of Education, 2012, p. 16). The standards do not seem to conceptualize foster carers as educators themselves. But whether or not foster carers see themselves as responsible and equipped for this role will have a considerable bearing on young children's cognitive development, educational engagement and progress. Melkman (2018) notes already considerable educational disadvantage among children in care by age 5 that does not improve over the primary school years. We suggest that, if this is to change, social work and fostering services need to give much more attention to the foster home learning environment. In particular, foster carers need to see themselves not only as experts in the everyday lives of fostered children but also as capable educators themselves (Cameron, Connelly, & Jackson, 2015). This paper presents a knowledge exchange (KE) project aimed at introducing a social pedagogically framed educative approach to fostering young children through the specific ECEC concept and practice of the treasure basket (Goldschmeid & Jackson, 2004). Social pedagogy is an educative philosophy with its origins in continental Europe that provides a framework for care practice in many countries (Cameron & Moss, 2011). For example, within a social pedagogical approach, foster carers are considered 'educators' who are responsible for upbringing, because their role is to support children and promote their participation in everyday life, on behalf of society. In this tradition, the self-concept (or self-belief) is important (Baumeister, 1999). Within social pedagogy, the practitioner is a relational resource, who brings their knowledge, skills and personal characteristics to the encounter in which they are working-whether child or adult. The effect is broadly educational. The self-concept as educator is someone who works with mutual curiosity and an open stance, accompanying the person (child/adult) or group and enabling them to be the very best version of themselves. This might be in the context of advice and guidance roles or committed upbringing, such as foster care, but always searches for the development of a person's potential, often through the medium of the expressive arts or exploration of the outdoors (Cameron & Petrie, 2011).
In the United Kingdom, social pedagogy has been gaining support as a relational, ethical, creative and reflective approach to working with children and adults in a variety of settings. In foster care, social pedagogy training has a positive impact on foster carers' self-confidence, in their use of theory, practical and creative activities and in their interactions with other professionals (McDermid, Holmes, Ghate, Trivedi, Blackmore & Baker , 2016).
This paper introduces what is known about developing foster carers' competences through continuous professional development (CPD) activities such as training and KE; provides an account of the characteristics of effective learning in professional contexts; documents the project design including training content; and discusses the findings of the project in relation to implementation and outcomes for foster carers. We argue that bringing foster care and ECEC practice together within a social pedagogic framework is highly promising as a method of engaging foster carers in reimagining their educative role and creatively adopting new practices.

| CAPACITY BUILDING IN FOSTER CARE: TRAINING
There is mixed evidence on the actual changes to practice brought about by foster care training (Baginsky, Gorin, & Sands, 2017).
Impact is most likely on trainees' learning rather than improved quality of life or outcomes for children (Baginsky, Gorin, & Sands, 2017).
Intensity and mode of delivery of training are significant factors (Solomon, Niec, & Schoonover, 2016). Across a meta-analysis of 15 studies on the outcomes of foster carer training in the United States, children in the intervention programmes had fewer difficulties at follow-up compared with children in comparison groups where the training had not taken place, particularly where the level of input was highest and there were homework requirements (Chamberlain et al., 2008;Knibbs, Mollidor, & Bierman, 2016;Solomon et al., 2016).
Given that one of the findings of Baginsky et al.'s (2017) review was the significance of training for carers' sense of self confidence and self-efficacy, it would appear important to attend to the ways in which capacity-building initiatives in foster care enable individuals to realize their knowledge and skills and marshal them into new practices, or, in other words, shift from trainee learning to trainee behaviour (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2006), from which improvements in service delivery and outcomes should follow.

| CAPACITY BUILDING THROUGH KE
KE is loosely defined as a two-way interaction and flow of ideas between, typically, academic research and practice that seeks to enhance the impact of research for public benefit (Economic and Social Research Council [ESRC], 2020). KE tends to be people based, problem solving and community based, rather than commercialisation oriented (Bullock & Hughes, 2016). KE foregrounds the principle of 'shared value' knowledge that 'academic researchers, practitioners and policy makers bring different, complementary skills to the table' and nurture 'relationships, opportunism, and creativity over and above process and formalised activity' (Murdock, Shariff, & Wilding, 2013, p. 427).
KE programmes that seek to build capacity and enhance service outcomes draw on theories of collaborative learning such as 'communities of practice', a group who 'share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly' (Wenger & Trayner, 2015). There are three components of effective shared learning: a domain, a community and a practice, around which dialogue takes place and practitioners 'develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems-in short, a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction' (Wenger & Trayner, 2015). In KE programmes, participants might be colleagues or co-practitioners who are helped to become communities of practice and who collaborate and reflect on their practice in order to advance goals held in common.
The essential features of KE might be (i) the principle of exchange of theoretical and practical knowledge between practitioners and researchers; (ii) a shared focus around which to generate new knowledge and/or skills; (iii) collaborative, experiential learning based in dialogue and practical activity; and (iv) a team or peer approach to learning. It offers distinctive benefits over traditional, instrumental and unidirectional training, as KE creates the opportunity to learn through relational and practical activity that has a direct bearing on the work contexts in which the new knowledge will be applied.

| KE IN FOSTER CARE
In Emond, George, McIntosh and Punch's (2019) KE programme to develop resources for use in foster care and residential care, the dialogic process revealed the complexity of accommodating differing understandings of the knowledge to be translated and widely varied starting points, memories, beliefs and expectations, leading to 'wider and deeper reflection on care itself' (Emond et al., 2019, p. 69). Some participants reported 'transformational' learning through the process of exchange of practice and research knowledge, assisted by longer term involvement, having a concrete objective (to create resources) and the style of delivery: an inclusive approach, a high level of information sharing, a personable tone in project communications, a warmth in the interactions between participants, a high level of commitment to the project and a feeling of mutual accountability (Emond et al., 2019). These project findings underline the features of KE described above.
Effective CPD in schools shares some characteristics of KE: where it is designed to be collaborative, team work and dialogue based, Cordingley, Bell, Rundell and Evans (2003) found CPD to be positively linked to teachers' broadening ranges of pedagogic strategies, self-confidence and commitment to ongoing learning with positive impact on students' learning and motivations. A capacitybuilding programme in foster care designed to introduce social pedagogy also used a dialogic approach (McDermid et al., 2016) that aligned well with features of KE. Foster carers reported that the training provided an empowering set of core social pedagogic principles, tools and models, which helped them to better understand and meet the needs of the children and young people in their care. They gained in confidence as practitioners and acquired new tools for working with conflict or difficult situations (McDermid et al., 2016).
Finally, a KE programme focusing on the education of children in care used school-and virtual school-focused projects to improve practice (Carroll and Cameron, 2017). In one of the projects, a virtual school worked with foster carers to develop their awareness of the importance of home learning.

| DEVELOPING FOSTER CARE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN THROUGH KE: PROJECT CONCEPT
Very little research about the day-to-day educational and social experience of young (precompulsory school age) fostered children has taken place. In a small ethnographic study, Meetoo, Cameron, Clark and Jackson (forthcoming) found that young fostered children may be relying on the adults and other children in the fostering household for stimulation and enjoyment of life, early literacy and numeracy. Study foster carers were experienced in the role, came from diverse ethnic and educational backgrounds, and held varied professional profiles. They tended to see themselves as responsible for relationships and day-to-day caring tasks, such as providing regular meals, and for the logistics of looking after children in local authority care (e.g., attending to multiple appointments, contact with birth family, meetings with social workers). For them, education was something that principally happened outside the home, in settings such as toddler groups, playgroups, nurseries and, eventually, school.
The current KE project was designed to see whether foster carers could (i) begin to change their self-concept from carer to educator and (ii) adopt more explicitly educational practices in their day-to-day work with young fostered children.
The specific ECEC practice in focus was the now very widely used treasure basket (Gascoyne, 2012). The idea was originally developed by Elinor Goldschmied as a means of engaging and providing interest for babies and infants who can sit up but not yet move independently.
The household and natural objects collected in the basket are designed to stimulate the child's senses of touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. Infants are encouraged to explore freely with an adult's supportive but unobtrusive presence and are often absorbed in play with the objects in the basket, for as long as an hour at a time (Goldschmied and Jackson, 1994). Jackson and Forbes (2015) further developed the idea of the treasure basket for use at home and in ECEC settings and emphasized the learning involved for parents and practitioners in seeking out and collecting items for the basket. However, extending the concept to older children as a means of promoting dialogue and interaction between adults and children in out-of-home care is completely new and has not been tried anywhere else so far as we know.
By introducing this practice into fostering, we hoped to widen and deepen foster carers' practical resources and provide an opportunity to reflect on how the role of carer might be thought of as educa-

| Programme design and contents
The KE programme was designed to harness three elements: (i) expertise from University College London (UCL) research in early childhood education; (ii) social pedagogic approaches to experiential training and development; and (iii) foster carers' own expertise in 'doing' foster care.
In Stage 1, research findings from our earlier ethnographic study (Meetoo et al., forthcoming) were collated and presented to professionals and foster carers in workshops in two London boroughs. The aim of the workshops was to present the findings and receive feedback from workshop participants. The majority of participants were foster carers (n = 9). We aimed recruitment at social workers, but none volunteered to attend. The priority of supervising social workers is placement, and they usually do not see education as part of their core business (Jackson, 1998;Jackson, 2019).
Professional participants were an educational psychologist (n = 1) and staff from one local authority's virtual school (n = 3). In paral- In Stage 2, we worked with social pedagogy trainers from Treehouse Associates to develop a 4-day KE programme. The aim was to offer an experientially and dialogically structured programme of learning activities that introduced (i) the social pedagogic self-concept of educator and (ii) using treasure baskets with young fostered children. The programme was run in two local authority areas: one that was highly urban and multiethnic and the other in a rural, predominantly ethnically White area of England.
Two groups of foster carers were recruited. In LA 1 (called 'county'), two supervising social workers were trained social pedagogues and could therefore immediately grasp the relevance of the proposed KE. They promoted the opportunity for free training to individual foster carers they knew and found the internal funding for room hire and supported foster carers attendance through paying travel costs. They recruited 15 foster carers (of whom nine attended) and volunteered to be co-trainers with Treehouse Associates in both local authority areas. In LA 2 (called 'urban'), the impact of a poor Ofsted (a national inspection agency) rating was consuming managerial time. Although willing, and with more than a year's established experience of working together with the UCL team, who had attended several foster care network support group meetings to advertise the KE programme, the local authority were reliant on administrative help to send out invitations to foster carers to attend, rather than the more proactive approach in the county area. Fewer (4) foster carers signed up after several months of recruitment activity. Due to scheduling difficulties, the programme was run over 3 days in the urban area. In both areas, the UCL research team visited on the last day to collect evaluative reflections on the KE programme experience from foster carers and trainers.
Programme content was built up from Treehouse Associates' expertise in social pedagogy and prior training programmes with foster carers, dialogic meetings with the UCL team, materials relevant to the treasure basket training and findings from the Stage 1 workshops and interviews.
The themes of the KE programme were (i) risk competence; (ii) lifeworlds and lifespace; (iii) people, things and places; and (iv) building the approach. On each day, there was a variety of learning methods from theory-based discussion to practical activities, and each included active appreciation of the discursive and practical contributions of foster carer participants. The content was designed to progress from developing reflective skills to building new competences. The content on Day 1, for example, looked at the role of risk when caring for, and being the everyday educator for, a young child and the differences between being risk averse and risk competent. This was informed by research findings and Stage 1 workshop discussions around foster carers managing risk and risk competency. Examples given by participants included being responsible for protecting the child from everyday hazards, which can be more problematic when the child has developmental delays, and being attentive to children after contact with their birth families, such as checking that their foster child did not show any sign of having suffered harm, such as bruising, both to safeguard the child and to protect their own integrity and reputation as foster carers. The content included an examination of theories of education and its relevance to foster care and the impact of this knowledge on the self (e.g., through questions such as 'how did they make you feel?'). The team similarly took forward discussions from the workshops on 'what is education for young foster children' and

| FINDINGS: IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION
The thematic analysis of the Stage 1 interviews with academic experts on early learning found two main themes about how and in what circumstances young children learn. These were (i) context and (ii) collaboration.

| The child's context and environment for learning is key
All the academic experts interviewed concurred that the context in which the child is present and their environment, be that at home with their birth parents, school and foster carer home, is an important factor for their learning (Tizard & Hughes, 2008). According to Alison Being hypervigilant to threats where a child may be experiencing unpredictable violence may to some extent keep them 'safe', but may also come at a cost to forming supportive relationship and also learning: We can think about the impact on two levels. One can be a direct effect, so … if you are allocating lots of your attention to processing threat you have less attention to allocate to more normal developmental experiences like learning in school or socialising with friends. But there is an equally important impact over time in how an individual elicits and sustains to other supportive relationships … If you are more likely to attribute hostility, that might lead to more conflictual interactions and make it harder to establish and cultivate the kind of protective relationships that can help buffer against future stresses.
The challenges that looked-after children face place foster carers in a key position to provide supportive and conducive environments to enable their learning. Such environments should enable children to have '… the freedom to have a go and to be able to get things wrong … To be in … an emotionally stable environment in which children feel confident enough to have a go' (Alison Clark).

Similarly, Eamon McCrory suggested that
… the way that the child experiences an environment very much depends on the relational context with the care giver. So they might be in a playground that's lovely with lots of things, but do they feel inhibited or anxious? And how are they are able to approach other peers? A focus on the material world can make it harder to grasp the relational context which is essential in helping the child negotiate the world around them.

| Learning through collaborative, child-led and exploratory enquiry
Foster carers are key actors in nurturing a learning environment, and the academic experts offered specific insights into relevant elements of such an environment: • Fostering a curiosity and an enjoyment of learning, this taking priority over being able to learn a number of new words or being able to spell; • Promoting children's self-confidence by highlighting things that they do well and praising them; • Reading bedtime stories, as they perform several functions such as bonding, making the child feel secure and learning; • Using play-based learning and problem solving so that children can explore and engage with the toys and objects in a variety of ways and add their own meanings. This stands apart from '"educational toys" that can have 'just one script for the children to follow' (Alison Clark) • Learning from the 'everyday' daily routines such as bath time and washing up, which can be through play. As Alison Clark explained: a washing machine can be a playful object in the sense that the washing machine is going and a young child can sit in front of it and they'll be mesmerised by it going round, and the bubbles. And then maybe that might then lead to getting some bubbles and playing with bubbles. … using the everyday but in quite an imaginative way … water is another thing. So setting out the water play, maybe having a bit of extra time for bath time so there's more play alongside the actual cleaning. So every moment of the day … bring in that sort of creativity.
• A collaborative approach to learning between adult and child, by working with the child's interest and capabilities. As Julie Dockrell explained through the following example:

| PROGRAMME EVALUATION
This was a pioneering KE programme, which met significant obstacles in implementation. Recruitment was difficult in the urban area, where the children's services team was distracted by external inspection requirements, and there were no in-house social pedagogues to encourage foster carers to participate. In county, there were practical problems such as arranging childcare cover to enable foster carers to attend. The extent to which a shift from learning to behaviour took place over time was impossible to ascertain.
However, in line with other social pedagogy training programmes (Cameron, 2016), immediate feedback was very positive, suggesting that this is a promising avenue for capacity building in foster care with young children.

| FEEDBACK FROM FOSTER CARERS
Foster carers were asked to name three things they had learned during the programme. All participants referred to learning social pedagogy theory and concepts such as multiple intelligences, lifeworld maps, intentionality, three Ps (personal, private and professional knowledge), the learning zone model and head, heart and hands (Kaska & Ladbrooke, 2015). Several referred to the relation- 'sometimes allow digression or stories to slow pace or progress but on the whole [it was] good'. The pace of a KE programme that uses experiential and peer learning inevitably has to adjust to pre-existing knowledge, variations in applicability to individual cases and in-themoment adjustments to emerging topics as noted above (compassion fatigue). Treehouse Associate trainers also reflected on the issue of pacing. In retrospect, they thought they could have introduced the treasure baskets earlier in the programme. Nevertheless, by the end of Day 2, some participants had dramatically shifted their self-concept. One of the trainers reported that, in a supervision session with one of the participants, she said 'My God, this blew my mind, the idea that I am as valuable as anyone else; in a meeting I can say "no, I don't think this is good for my foster child". She never did that. I didn't realise we would do that in the first two days'.
The KE programme used the concept of 'intentionality' to bring a deliberate focus to being conscious of changing practice. The evaluation asked foster carers to specify how they would use their new knowledge. They had a range of ideas for using the treasure basket, including 'with my birth children to enable them to better understand the foster child and form an attachment'; 'shar[ing] with one child's teaching assistant'; 'sharing the idea with friends who are foster carers'; and 'giv[ing] basket to adoptive parents, explain and support them to in extending use of it with them'.
With current foster children, several carers said they would 'create a treasure basket for each foster child/meeting their specific needs' and a carer who had a sibling group thought it would be 'interesting to create individual baskets for each child and, with birth children at home, I look forward to involving them'. The concept of intentionality had helped some foster carers to reflect on herself, their child and their needs: … I realise he has a fantastic imagination but I am almost wondering if he is almost overstimulated by the things he has … I will have to approach this with him. I am not a natural player … I will use the treasure basket more and use more things around the home. Almost as though he is doing too much, too many activities, too many friends around the house. Need to find a quiet space for him, so I will use the treasure basket (FC1,urban) For this carer, the programme had been an opportunity to reflect on 'learning opportunities you can create in the everyday and has calmed me down a bit, that I can take a step back, made me think, maybe this is going on/that's going on and I can use the wondering thing, thinking more about our interactions … [I can] do an interaction that is totally different, like the treasure basket, rather than be caught in a conflict' (FC1, urban).
Participants also had plans to use the treasure basket in innovative ways. One who had a child with 'a difficult relationship with food' wanted to 'put fruits and vegetables in the basket' and another planned to use a basket with a child aged 6 and a half with special educational needs' (FC7 county). Exploring the treasure basket idea had helped carers to have confidence in the outdoors as a learning opportunity. Carers wanted to 'do more exploratory outdoor trips' (FC5, county), 'keep items when we go out for a walk, such as stones in a bottle, and then talk about them' (FC6, county) and, when 'walking back from activities, to reflect back on the pleasure we have just experienced' (FC1, urban).

| DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Young children in foster care are in a liminal position where their future family and home environment may not be decided, yet they are expected to be a part of a current foster family, an arrangement that can persist for months and even years before they are adopted, returned to their birth family or stay in foster care long term. In an era when most young children attend some form of ECEC, and home learning is known to be crucial, the project on which this paper is based sought to illuminate how foster carers and the professionals they come into contact with might support young fostered children's early educational and social development in the home environment, with a particular focus on the treasure basket as a tool for collaborative exploration of the natural and everyday world, communicative learning and joint reflection.
The design of the project aimed to exchange knowledge between academic researchers, practitioners and through an experientially based training programme, with a view to a shift in foster carers' selfconcept from carer towards being an educator. The training was underpinned by concepts from social pedagogy, itself congruent with the findings of the academic interviews, that learning needs to be in context and in collaboration with others. Feedback from foster carers suggested that they grasped the content of the training and were committed to using more educational practices such as reflection, discussion and joint activities, which is suggestive of a shift in selfconcept towards 'educator', and they used their expertise to think through adapting the theory to practice.
Moreover, foster carers said they enjoyed the training programme, learning both theory and practice skills, and were committed to adopting the treasure basket practice. Arguably, the KE approach, which included time for dialogue and content substantially grounded in the workshop findings and interviews conducted in Stage 1, contributed to the success of their experience as Emond et al. (2019) found.
There are three main ways in which this project makes a contribution to knowledge. First, the mode of training was longer and more immersive and designed in line with KE principles of research-practice exchange, a shared focus, collaborative knowledge generation and team learning. This set it apart from the training usually offered to foster carers in the areas studied. While there has been a social pedagogy training programme in foster care (McDermid et al., 2016), the programme presented here narrowed the focus and intentionally brought social pedagogic concepts into dialogue with techniques from ECEC. Second, although foster care in general has a role in supporting children's education in school, and although ECEC has a role in looking after and educating children from disadvantaged backgrounds, the two are usually considered separate domains. The common ground in educative approaches to children's upbringing are rarely explored in training programmes. The project focus on education in the daily life of the foster home was highly innovative, but its very unusualness may be one reason why recruitment was difficult. Third, the very positive evaluation of the experience of the programme was in line with those of other social pedagogy training (Cameron, 2016), suggesting that the programme could be worth repeating with more foster carers and in different locations. Clearly, intention to change practice is not the same as actual changed practice and further KE programmes on the same theme could usefully gather data on longer term impact on practice.