Search results for "LDH"
showing 10 items of 1015 documents
‘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-…
Documenting Napping: The Agentic Force of Documents and Human Action
2015
The article examines the question of the agentic force of documents in institutional practices and proposes a conceptual model of the agentic relation between documentation and human actors. For this aim, it presents an empirical case study of Finnish early childhood education and care. The study deals with individual education plans (IEPs), which are an example of child documentation that aims at an individualised and participatory pedagogy. The analytical focus is on a single topic of an IEP, the child’s afternoon naps, and how these are negotiated in the three-party encounter between a parent, a practitioner and the IEP document. The theoretical framework draws on the theories of documen…
Finnish Pre-Service Teachers’ Perceptions of Perceived Competence in Early Childhood Physical Education
2021
Early childhood education and care (ECEC) teachers have a central role in supporting young children’s physical activity (PA) and overall development in the early years. However, the value of early childhood education teacher training (ECETT) programmes is not widely understood. This study aimed to investigate pre-service teachers’ perceptions of perceived competence when (1) supporting a child’s PA, (2) teaching PE, and (3) observing and assessing a child’s motor skills and PA. These self-evaluations were compared with a range of individual, educational, and behavioural characteristics. Final-year Bachelor degree pre-service teachers (n = 274
Parental agency and related emotions in the educational partnership
2017
This study investigated the understudied issue of parental agency and related emotions in the educational partnership in the context of Finnish early childhood education and care. We asked (i) what types of parental agency can be identified in the educational partnership and (ii) in what ways emotions are related to these types of agency. The narrative method was used to analyse the interview data of parents of children with difficulties in self-regulation. The findings indicate that parental agency in the educational partnership varied from proactive and confrontational to hindered. Typically, pleasant emotions were related to proactive and unpleasant emotions to confrontational parental a…
Finnish and Greek early childhood teachers’ perspectives and practices in supporting children’s autonomy
2017
Kindergarten teachers from different cultural backgrounds attribute various meanings to children’s autonomy. There seems to be cultural differences in early childhood education curricula with regard to how a child’s autonomy is described and how it is supported. This qualitative study asks: how do teachers narrate their perspective and pedagogical support of children’s autonomy, and what kinds of similarities and differences in the pedagogy and practices can be found in Finnish and Greek early childhood education (ECEC) contexts? The data of this qualitative study consist of a semi-structured questionnaire of 14 kindergarten teachers and observations of their pedagogical practices in the da…