With children in their lived place: children's action as research data

Abstract This article discusses theory and methods of researching the everyday experiences of children in the city environment combined with the question of giving a voice to children. The article is organised into three parts. Part one provides a conceptual background, theorising the relational as well as intergenerational character of the concept of environment. The cultural-geographical theory and the concept of Thirdspace are used. Part two illustrates the theoretical and methodological themes with reference to my study with children. I explored the encounter between children and the urban environment. I applied ethnographic tours around a city block with children and the children's spo…

Relational approach to infant-teacher lap interactions during the transition from home to early childhood education and care

The transition from home care to early childhood education and care (ECEC) is a period of intense change and development in young children's socio-spatial worlds. This article focuses on infant–teacher lap interactions during this transition period. This investigation applies a relational approach to the study of infant–teacher lap interactions. In doing so, it highlights the inherently social and contextual nature of interaction. From a relational perspective, actors, context, and situation are seen as constitutive of each other, and their interrelationality is considered central to the emergence of interactions. The data, regarding infants' first months attending ECEC in Finland, is compo…

Constructing relational space in early childhood education

This paper examines early childhood education (ECE) by applying and developing relational-spatial perspectives on everyday life in educational institutions for young children. The aim is to investigate the dynamic process of construction of space and to illustrate with selected empirical episodes how this process occurs in ECE. Drawing on authors such as Soja and Bourdieu, the starting point for the analysis is that space is socially produced in everyday interactions in a process that intertwines the physical environment and concrete objects, personal interpretations of physical and cultural space, and cultural and collective views about space in ECE. We illustrate this process with ethnogr…

Varhaiskasvatustutkimuksen kaksi vuosikymmentä : tieteenalat, kysymyksenasettelut ja metodit

Varhaiskasvatus on tullut yhteiskunnan palveluna yleisesti tutuksi viime aikoina poliittisen keskustelun kautta. Varhaiskasvatus käsite otettiin Suomessa käyttöön Varhaiskasvatuksen koulutuskomitean mietinnön (KM 1974:15) myötä. Tämän jälkeen varhaiskasvatuksesta tuli myös lastentarhanopettajakoulutuksen pääoppiaine, kun aiempia oppisisältöjä yhdistettiin varhaiskasvatuksen kokonaisuudeksi. (Husa & Kinos 2001, 19.) Oppiaineena varhaiskasvatus on monitieteinen, joskin sen juuret ovat vahvasti kytköksissä kehityspsykologiaan (Karila, Kinos, Niiranen & Virtanen 2003, 125–126). Karila ym. (2003) ovat analysoineet lastentarhanopettajakoulutusten opetussuunnitelmia ja huomauttaneet, että analyysi…

Clothes

Niina Rutanen, Raija Raittila, Mari Vuorisalo write about Clothes and clothing practices in Finnish early childhood education and care. The adopted approach combines relational sociology and geography and addresses the different kinds of spaces clothing practices create in ECEC. Clothing and clothing practices play an important role in the everyday life of ECEC, but often have a different meaning to educators, to the children and to parents. Niina, Raija and Mari show how these different spaces collide with each other and create one possible story of Arctic childhood. In their understanding, space is a social construction and changes in action. They state how ‘the ‘ideal’ Nordic child is th…

Tulevaisuuteen suuntaava varhaiskasvatustiede

Kindergarten space and autonomy in construction - Explorations during team ethnography in a Finnish kindergarten

Abstract Children’s autonomy is a cultural ideal in Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC). In this article we examine autonomy in spatial terms. The theoretical background is developed by applying spatial sociology. Our starting point is that space is relationally produced, thus, we understand space as continuously negotiated, reconstructed and reorganized phenomena. In this article, we investigate the production of space by different actors in ECEC and seek to show how autonomy is also continuously produced and re-produced in the negotiation of space. For this investigation we use data collected as part of a team ethnographic project in a Finnish kindergarten. The project inclu…

Negotiating Ethics-in-Action in a Long-term Research Relationship with a Young Child

AbstractThis article continues the discussions of relational ethics put forward in Human Arenas in “Arena of Ethics” (Hilppö et al., 2019). Our aim in this article is to explore and discuss relational ethics, as ethics-in-action, in a long-term research relationship with a child. Our question is: How is ethics-in-action negotiated during critical incidents in the construction of a research space that involves a long-term research relationship with a young child? This article is based on a research project that focused on children’s transitions in early childhood education and care (ECEC). These transitions include the transition from home care to ECEC as well as transitions from child group…

Retkellä : lasten ja kaupunkiympäristön kohtaaminen

Raija Raittila kyseenalaistaa väitöstutkimuksessaan perinteisen ympäristö- ja luonnontiedon varhaiskasvatuksen ja esiopetuksen ympäristökasvatuksen perustana. Hänen mukaansa se tarjoaa liian kapean näkökulman pienten lasten ympäristökansalaiseksi kasvamiselle.- Lasten omat tavat kohdata ympäristö tulisi yhdistää arkiseen työskentelyyn, jossa ympäristöön liittyvät eettiset, esteettiset, kulttuuriset, luonnontieteelliset ja yhteiskunnalliset ainekset voisivat limittyä. Ympäristökasvatus voisi perustua lasten ja lapsiryhmien omaehtoiselle toiminnalle kaupunkiympäristössä yhtä hyvin kuin luontoretkillekin, Raittila sanoo.Kaupunkiympäristöä tarkastelemalla ja tutkimalla lasten on helppo nähdä ja…

Relational analysis and the ethnographic approach : constructing preschool childhood

This article elaborates the relational ontology in an ethnographic study. The aim is to seek relational construction of preschool practice and how children’s positions are constructed in it. The study is based on the understanding that ethnography and relational sociology share the idea that society emerges through repeated relations. The ontological thinking of relational sociology is applied in a micro-level analysis of three episodes from a Finnish preschool. We propose that relations appear in every single ethnographical episode and that carefully analysed repetitive relations can reveal a stabilised organisational structure. The analysis shows how the position of one child is structuri…