Anne Grethe Baustad
Anne Grethe holds a professional degree in early childhood education and care and a Master’s in Early Childhood Education and Care (M.ECEC), specializing in the age range 0–8 years. She earned a PhD in Science of Professions, with her doctoral research focusing on whether an intervention grounded in the Caregiver Interaction Profile (CIP) could enhance early childhood educators’ conceptual understanding and improve the quality of their interactions with children. The study examined educators’ perceptions of “high-quality” interactions and their engagement with groups of children both prior to and following the intervention.
Anne Grethe brings more than two decades of professional experience in early childhood education and care, having served as both department leader and manager. Additionally, she worked as a project manager and supervisor for development initiatives in early childhood settings. Since 2012, she has been affiliated with the Faculty of Education and Arts at Nord University. From 2012 to 2025, she held the position of Assistant Professor in Pedagogy, and since 2025, she has served as Associate Professor in Pedagogy.
Anne Grethe has taught pedagogy within the Early Childhood Teacher Education program across multiple courses. In recent years, her primary teaching responsibilities have been in Children’s Development, Play and Learning and Leadership, Collaboration and Development Work. She has also taught Philosophy of Science and Research Methods and Research and Current Debates in the Master’s programs in Adapted Education and Special Education. Furthermore, she has served as course coordinator for Philosophy of Science and Research Methods (Modules 1 and 2), Research and Current Debates, and the Master’s Thesis, all part of the Master’s programs in Adapted Education and Special Education. From January 2026, she is responsible for the course Leadership and Change Processes in Early Childhood Education and Care, which is part of the Master’s program in Early Childhood Pedagogy. Since 2019, Anne Grethe has also served as a Development Partner in Regional Competence Development.
She has supervised students in the Early Childhood Teacher Education program as well as in the Master’s programs in Adapted Education and Early Childhood Pedagogy.
Anne Grethes research primarily addresses quality in early childhood education, professional learning, learning within professional learning communities, and development work in early childhood settings. She is the leader of the research group Quality in Early Childhood Education and Teacher Education—an interdisciplinary group that adopts a broad understanding of quality and conducts research on various dimensions of quality in early childhood education and teacher preparation. In addition, she is a member of two other research groups: Interaction in Diverse Learning Environments, including early childhood and school settings—a group that focuses on the use of video to examine interactions; and School and Early Childhood Education and Care Leadership, Innovation and Change—a group dedicated to research and development within the education sector.
Anne Grethe has, among other research activities, been involved in the large longitudinal research project Better Provision for Norway’s Children (BePro), the first project in Norway to focus on quality in early childhood education and care. The project examined characteristics and different forms of quality in early childhood education and care settings, as well as the impact of various types of early childhood provision on children’s well-being, learning outcomes, progression, and development. She has also participated as a co-researcher in an international project involving researchers from 13 countries, which explored whether it is possible to develop a shared understanding of quality criteria in early childhood education and care. This project analyzed which quality criteria were considered most and least important by different stakeholders in the sector, with both teachers and parents participating in the study. More recently, she has contributed to a national project aimed at developing a research-based tool for quality assessment grounded on the Norwegian Framework Plan for Kindergartens, designed for use in practice to evaluate and improve process quality in Norwegian early childhood education and care settings. Currently, she is involved in a smaller project investigating Norwegian and Maltese children’s perspectives on the sea by analyzing their drawings and related conversations.
Anne Grethe is also a member of an international research network: Early Childhood Environment Rating Scales (ECERS) International Network, which focuses on the assessment and development of quality in early childhood education and care.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6693-029X