Early Childhood Summer School 2024

This summer, the Early Childhood community of Dynamics of Youth organized its first annual summer school. We started on 19 August 2024 with a cup of coffee and a lecture about early brain development by professor Christian Lohmann. After learning everything about the development of neurons and more specifically synapses, we continued with a lecture about sleep in newborns and premature babies by dr. Jeroen Dudink. Every afternoon we had a workshop. The first workshop gave a nice overview of the different clinical and scientific applications of ultrasound and MRI. After a successful first day, the summer school had officially started. During the second-to-last week of August, twenty enthusiastic participants would learn everything about early development from different perspectives.

“It was great to consider the broad window of development in all domains.”

In July 2023, we decided that we wanted to organize an ‘Early Childhood community Summer School’ the next year. The EC chairs agreed that it would be a great opportunity to expand our international network and show the value of interdisciplinary research. This decision resulted in a busy year of making an interdisciplinary program, finding speakers and promoting the course. In the end, the finalized program consisted of lectures and workshops from speakers from almost all faculties of the university, truly reflecting the spirit of Dynamics of Youth.

“One of the things I liked most about the summer school were the hands-on workshops.”

From the very start we knew that, besides interdisciplinarity, we would also value the application of knowledge. Participants would not only listen and discuss but also learn by doing. In the end we developed a schedule where we hosted two lectures in the morning, followed by two workshops in the afternoon. Participants could choose between the afternoon lectures and join the one that suited their interests best. We tried to ensure that every day participants could choose between a more ‘technical’ workshop – for example about computer vision, machine learning or advanced statistics – or a more ‘general’ workshop – for example about co-creating with parents, blog writing or observational research.

“Discuss with others and be open to new perspectives”

To say that the interests of our participants were broad, is an understatement. In true Dynamics of Youth spirit, they made connections between lectures and their own field, they made innovative observations and had interesting conversations about cultural differences in early development and parenting. Nine different countries were represented in the small lecture room. During the first day, when asked about their goals, everyone stated that they wanted to make connections. After the summer school ended, most participants told us that they had enjoyed getting inspired by and sharing their views with such a friendly, respectful group of people.

During the summer school, participants learned about the different ways to consider child development. They had the opportunity to make connections between different fields, talk to experts about their discoveries, learn from their peers and acquire new skills during the hands-on workshops. All in all, the summer school helped young researchers and professionals to get acquainted with the core of Dynamics of Youth. Or as one of our participants put it:

“That all areas of child development are related!”