TALIS Starting Strong is a collaborative effort, bringing together expertise from participating countries and subnational entities that share an interest in developing a survey project to inform their policies about the early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce and quality of provision. This report is the product of collaboration and co-operation among many stakeholders and contributors.
In particular, the co-operation of staff and leaders in the participating ECEC settings has been crucial in ensuring the success of TALIS Starting Strong. Engagement with bodies representing teachers (Education International) and regular briefings and exchanges with the Trade Union Advisory Council (TUAC) at the OECD have been very important in the development and implementation of TALIS Starting Strong.
The Informal Group on TALIS Starting Strong, a sub-group of the TALIS Governing Board, has, in the context of OECD objectives, driven the development of the project and its policy objectives. This includes the objectives of the analysis and reports produced, the conceptual framework and the development of the TALIS Starting Strong questionnaires. The Informal Group on TALIS Starting Strong has also overseen the implementation of the survey and the preparation of this report.
Participating countries and subnational entities implemented TALIS Starting Strong at the national or subnational level at national project centres through, among others, national project managers (NPMs), national data managers (NDMs) and national sampling managers (NSMs), who were subject to rigorous technical and operational procedures. The NPMs played a crucial role in helping to secure the co-operation of ECEC settings, to oversee the national adaptation, translation and validation of the questionnaires, to manage the national data collection and processing and to verify the results from TALIS Starting Strong. The NDMs co-ordinated data processing at the national or subnational level and liaised in the cleaning of the data. The NSMs were responsible for implementing TALIS Starting Strong, respecting sampling procedures and other rigorous technical and operational procedures. In addition to the participating countries and subnational entities, the United States contributed to the development of the questionnaires.
A Questionnaire Expert Group (QEG) was established to translate the policy priorities into questionnaires to address the policy and analytical questions that had been agreed by the Informal Group on TALIS Starting Strong. A Technical Advisory Group (TAG) was assembled to advise during the decision-making process for technical or analytical issues. A group of subject-matter experts and analysts were also critical in the analytical phase and drafting of the initial reports.
The co-ordination and management of implementation at the international level was the responsibility of the appointed contractors, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), its consortium members, cApStAn and RAND Europe AISBL. The TALIS Starting Strong Consortium included staff from the IEA offices in Amsterdam and Hamburg, cApStAn and RAND Europe AISBL.
IEA Hamburg was responsible for the overall survey planning, survey administration, the international data management, item analyses and scaling for the TALIS core. IEA Amsterdam was responsible for overseeing the verification of the translation and for the implementation of the international quality control programme. The sampling unit at the IEA Hamburg, developed the sampling plan, advised countries and subnational entities on its application, calculated the sampling weights and advised on the calculation of sampling errors. RAND Europe AISBL managed the development of the survey instruments and conceptual framework. cApStAn linguistic quality control, Brussels Belgium, was responsible for organising and implementing the translation verification process for all administered languages.
The OECD Secretariat had overall responsibility for managing the project, monitoring its implementation on a day-to-day basis and serving as the secretariat of the Informal Group on TALIS Starting Strong.