Search results for "Early Childhood Educatio"
showing 10 items of 243 documents
Recording Support Measures in the Sequential Pedagogical Documents of Children With Special Education Needs
2019
This study investigates the descriptions of support measures in the sequential pedagogical documents (individual education plans or programs and others) of children with special education needs from early childhood education and care to preprimary education. According to the previous research, the role of pedagogical work is largely disregarded in these documents, which typically focus on describing children’s challenges instead of support measures. In this study, the sequential pedagogical documents ( N = 257) of 64 Finnish children were studied for approximately 3 to 6 years, and the data were analyzed by investigating the textual and content-related coherence, as well as the linguistic …
Negotiating Ethics-in-Action in a Long-term Research Relationship with a Young Child
2021
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…
Voices heard and lessons learnt : Exploring multiple knowledges and local participation in a community-based integrated early childhood development p…
2019
Abstract Following calls for diverse and contextual perspectives of the rich lives of young children, their families and communities from/in the Global South, this paper presents critical reflections emerging from a three-year (2016-2019) communitybased Integrated Approach to Early Childhood Development (ECD) project implemented in the rural Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. It explores the critical relationship established between a range of stakeholders involved in this project as reflected on by two community activists working together in the area of early childhood in the province for thirty years. This article highlights the importance of situating any community development initiati…
Rasch Analysis of Authentic Evaluation of Young Children's Functioning in Classroom Routines.
2021
This study evaluated the functioning of children in early childhood education classroom routines, using the 3M Functioning in Preschool Routines Scale. A total of 366 children aged 36 to 70 months and 22 teachers from six early childhood education centers in Spain participated in the study. The authors used the Rasch model to determine the item fit and the difficulty of the items in relation to children's ability levels in this age range. The Rasch Differential Item Functioning (DIF) analysis by child age groups showed that the item difficulty differed according to the children's age and according to their levels of competence. The results of this study supported the reliability and validit…
‘Ordinary’ and ‘diverse’ families : A case study of family discourses by Finnish early childhood education and care administrators
2021
The increased family diversity is a major global trend. Although family configurations are also diverse in contemporary Finland, it has been argued that Finnish family policies and institutional understanding of family life continues to focus on the heteronormative two-parent family with a native Finnish background. To address this issue, we analysed Finnish family discourses through qualitative interviews with early childhood education and care administrators (n = 47), applying a discourse analytic framework. Our results suggest that families are discussed through two divergent but interwoven discourses, i.e. the discourse of ordinary families and that of diverse families. The former focus…
The involvement of autistic children in early childhood education
2023
Research on the involvement of autistic children in daily activities in inclusive early childhood education is scarce. In Finland, all children, including autistic children, under the age of seven (before basic education) are entitled to participate in early childhood education and care. Children also attend compulsory, free-of-charge pre-primary education during the year before their basic education begins. Furthermore, attending early childhood education and care is not dependent whether a child requires day care because of their parents’ work. Autistic children attend early childhood education in inclusive day care centres. Thus, in this study, we examined the involvement of autistic chi…
Flexibly Scheduled Early Childhood Education and Care: Finnish Mothers’ and Educators’ Perceptions on Young Children’s Experiences and Child-Responsi…
2018
The study explores Finnish mothers' and educators' perceptions on young children's experiences and child-responsive practices related to flexibly-scheduled early childhood education and care (ECEC). Data were gathered by ethnography-based interviews with mothers and educators of oneto three-year-old children attending this form of ECEC and qualitatively analysed using the method of inductive content analysis. According to the interviewees, young children experienced a multitude of feelings related to flexibly-scheduled ECEC, ranging from the undesirable, such as strain, distress and confusion, to the desirable, such as comfort, satisfaction and understanding. The children's feelings were as…
Trust in the educational partnership narrated by parents of a child with challenging behaviour
2019
This study examined trust in educational partnership in the context of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Finland, from the viewpoint of parents of a child with challenging behaviour. Typically, such children have difficulties in regulating their behaviour and emotions. Semi-structured interviews with 23 parents were content-analysed in a narrative framework. The analysis revealed two critical elements of trust in educational partnership: (1) Child well-being in the day care centre, and (2) a supportive parent–educator relationship and collaboration. Critical factors in the first element of trust were educators’ respectful and good-quality relationships with the child and fair and…
Flexibly scheduled early childhood education and care: experiences of Finnish parents and educators
2017
This study focuses on flexibly scheduled early childhood education and care (ECEC), an institutional childcare service for Finnish families where both parents, or a single parent, work non-standard hours. Although many countries nowadays offer extended hours day care, only Finland has a publicly provided, law-based system guaranteeing ECEC during non-standard as well as standard hours. We explore, drawing on parental survey data, what kinds of families use such services and when. Furthermore, we utilise web-survey data obtained from early educators to find out what they report as the main challenges involved in implementing flexibly scheduled ECEC. The results showed that single-parent fami…
Evening early childhood education and care: Reformulating the institutional culture
2020
The article investigates the ongoing reformulation of the institutional culture of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Finnish evening ECEC. Educators’ practices in implementing evening ECEC were explored and viewed through the lens of young children’s belonging. Data were collected by observing the evenings of eight children aged 20–36 months in two Finnish centers offering flexibly scheduled ECEC and analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis. Three main themes of educators’ practices were identified: (1) managing a unique and changing social group, (2) fostering homeliness, and (3) maintaining routines and institutional order. While these practices mostly contributed to child-…