Search results for " Childhood"
showing 10 items of 507 documents
Perspectives on Leadership in Early Childhood Education and Care Centers Through Community of Practice
2021
This article investigates early childhood education and care (ECEC) leadership through the concept of community of practice (COP). The focus is on ECEC leaders’ perceptions regarding their leadership during the educational changes taking place in the context of Finnish ECEC. The purpose is to increase understanding of how leaders see themselves in relation to the ECEC multi professional working community and practices of distributed leadership. The data are five focus group interviews of ECEC leaders analyzed with directed content analysis within the theoretical frame of domain, practice, and community forming the core of COP in Lave and Wenger. The results show how all three COP component…
Teacher development through language-related innovation in a decentralised educational system
2021
This study explores how early childhood education and basic education teachers develop and develop innovations within the decentralised educational system of Finland. The comprehensive dataset of 20 field interviews provides a range of insights into teachers’ goals, principles, inspirations and experiences when working with a variety of language-based innovations across Finland. The ecological perspective employed in the study highlights the complex relationships between the different ecosystems of education. With the particular focus on the educator-exosystem relationship, the findings indicate how Finnish teachers respond to the expectation to continuously develop and innovate as key chan…
Important themes in research on and education of young children in day care centres: Finnish viewpoints
2013
The aim of this article is to outline important themes, according to Finnish early childhood education researchers, that need to be addressed in researching and educating children under three years of age in Finland. To achieve this aim, the article divides into two parts. First, we present and discuss the results of a small-scale survey, conducted in Finland, on the views of key informants in the early childhood education units of Finnish universities. Second, the views presented in the survey are used as a starting point to introduce two ongoing qualitative case studies on the everyday life of toddlers in Finnish day care centres. In line with the survey findings, these case studies empha…
Språkmedvetenhet i småbarnspedagogiskt arbete – Finländska daghemspedagogers reflektioner
2019
Sammandrag: Under det senaste decenniet har Finland blivit alltmer mångspråkigt. Det syns också i styrdokumenten. I denna artikel beskrivs hur pedagoger vid ett tvåspråkigt så kallat samlokaliserat daghem resonerar kring begreppet språkmedvetenhet och hur deras diskurser förhåller sig till det som skrivs om språkmedvetenhet i Grunderna för planen för småbarnspedagogik 2016 (det nationella styrdokumentet för småbarnspedagogik). Enligt resultaten är pedagogerna medvetna om deras roll som språkmedvetna vuxna och hur de kan stödja barns språkliga medvetenhet i svenska/finska medan diskurser om annan flerspråkighet ej förekommer spontant. Studien visar att det är viktigt att diskutera språkmedve…
Whose culture? Monolithic cultures and subcultures in early childhood settings
2016
In Finland, day care centre directors have traditionally led only a single unit, but after the recent merging of many units, most directors simultaneously lead several, physically separate units. These organizations are called distributed organizations. This study was carried out in two distributed day care organizations. The findings are based on interviews with and observations of the staff members. When organizational mergers occur, they raise questions about culture. The findings show that part of the culture should have been shared by all members across the organization, but staff also emphasized the importance of subcultures. Two of Meyerson and Martin’s paradigms were found to exist …
Views from the Inside: Roles of Deputy Directors in Early Childhood Education in Finland
2021
This study explored the perceptions of deputy directors about their leadership in Early Childhood Education (ECE) centres in Finland. Our aim was to look beyond task distribution and understand how deputy directors enacted leadership with their colleagues. Six deputy directors employed in one municipality in Finland participated in this study. Interviewed individually, the participants discussed how they themselves perceived being in a leadership position and what their leadership looked like in practice. The emphasis they placed on the various relationships highlight the importance of paying attention to the relational dynamics amongst staff within a centre, taking into account both formal…
Perceptions of early childhood education professionals on teacher leadership in Finland
2016
This study investigated perceptions of early childhood education (ECE) professionals employed at three ECE centres on teacher leadership enactment in Finland. These professionals comprised childcare nurses, teachers and ECE centre directors. Theoretically, the study was anchored on an analysis of teacher leadership and distributed leadership literature comprising research based in early childhood and school education contexts. Findings based on focus groups and interviews with participants suggest that teacher leadership was perceived as a responsibility of ECE pedagogy in Finland. Centre directors were considered remote from daily practice and leadership for pedagogy within the centres was…
Why nurturing curiosity is an ethical endeavour: exploring practitioners’ reflections on the importance of curiosity
2018
Several authors have argued that early childhood education and care (ECEC) is essentially an ethical practice based on certain values and conceptions about the purpose of education. Is this also th...
Habilidades predictoras de éxito en el aprendizaje inicial de la lectura y su relación con dos métodos de enseñanza
2019
Esta comunicación se encuentra disponible en la siguiente URL: http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/INRED/INRED2019/paper/viewFile/10403/4739 Este número está dedicado a la "Psicología de la Educación y Saberes Originarios". El estudio de los factores que influyen en la adquisición de la lectura facilita la detección temprana de las dificultades del aprendizaje lector. Destacan como habilidades predictoras: el conocimiento fonológico, el conocimiento alfabético y la velocidad de denominación. Todas ellas se adquieren a lo largo de la escolaridad pero no tienen el mismo grado de implicación en las distintas fases del aprendizaje lector. Esto parece depender, en parte, del método de enseñanz…
A Critical Analysis of the Explicit and Implicit Treatment of Human Rights Education in Early Childhood Education Textbooks
2020
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child explicitly recognizes that children are entitled to the full range of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. Despite the powerful social function of textbooks in legitimizing cultural norms in primary and secondary education, there has been little attention on human rights issues in early childhood education (ECE) curricular materials. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the explicit and implicit representation of human rights education (HRE) in ECE textbooks. Our quantitative and qualitative results show that ECE textbooks failed to find any explicit mention of children’s rights, an excessive attention focused on t…