Search results for "curriculum"
showing 10 items of 630 documents
Early Childhood Education and Care System in Finland
2017
In Finland, Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) includes day care arrangements offered to families (care) along with goal-oriented early childhood education (early education and teaching) provided for children prior to transitioning to primary education. ECEC is therefore seen to build a coherent starting phase within the continuum of lifelong learning. ECEC follows the “educare” principle, which emphasizes the simultaneous consideration for children’s education, teaching, and care as the foundation of pedagogical activity, which is at the same time strongly rooted in the idea of learning and development as a holistic experience. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of th…
Finland: Becoming and the Youngest Children at Home and in ECEC
2019
This chapter will focus on the youngest children and the everyday contexts and practices of their lives in Finland. The chapter explores the concept of ‘becoming’ within childhood, particularly within early childhood education and care (ECEC) in our country. For the youngest children, their homes and nuclear families have been historically and culturally constructed as the first and most important social and emotional growth environments. For families, the discourses concerning the ‘best or right place’ for their young children to be cared for and learn in are fuelled by the extensive system of financial incentives for home care (e.g. maternity, paternity and home allowances). Only about 40…
Applying a Mixed Method Design to Evaluate Training Seminars Within an Early Childhood Education Project
2008
Abstract The body of research relating to assessment in education suggests that professional developers and seminar administrators have generally paid little attention to evaluation procedures. Scholars have also been critical of evaluations which use a single data source and have favoured the use of a multiple method design to generate a complete picture of the effectiveness of procedures under evaluation. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate two training seminars using a mixed method design. The evaluation procedure was specifically designed to utilise triangulation of sources and to follow Killion's eight-step process. The seminars were part of the ‘Early Steps’ project, a Eu…
Younger children in ECEC: focus on the national steering documents in the Nordic countries
2015
The aim of this study was to review the national steering documents on early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, with the focus on children up to the age of three, posing the question: What do these documents tell us about ECEC for younger children in the Nordic early childhood settings? Methodologically, a qualitative document analysis was applied. The documents provide a picture of young children whose age, individual needs and a number of other factors, such as cultural background, should be taken into account in ECEC. These children learn holistically, in close interaction with their environment. Their safety and well-being are seen as pa…
Transition to formal schooling: Do transition practices matter for academic performance?
2011
Abstract This study examined whether the transition practices implemented in preschool–elementary school pairs contribute to children's academic development during the first year of elementary school. Participants were 398 children who moved from 36 preschools to 22 elementary schools in two Finnish towns. Children were tested in respect to their reading, writing, and math skills in the preschool spring and in the grade 1 spring. The most common practices reported by preschool teachers were discussions about the school entrants and familiarizing preschool children with the school environment and the new teacher. Multilevel latent growth modeling showed that the more the preschool teachers a…
Training for gender equity: an experience through choreographies in Early Childhood Education
2020
INTRODUCCIÓN. En Educación Infantil, el trabajo de los denominados temas transversales toma especial relevancia porque permiten reforzar las destrezas del alumnado en diferentes áreas, que contribuyen a un desarrollo adecuado durante la Educación Primaria. Los contenidos de la asignatura “Procesos musicales en Educación Infantil”, de tercer curso del Grado de Maestra de Educación Infantil, permiten el trabajo de esos temas, concretamente, las coreografías. Éstas pueden ser utilizadas como herramientas lúdicas que garantizan no sólo el trabajo de las habilidades motrices básicas, sino también la equidad, la educación cívica y moral…, por el contenido de las canciones que pueden ser utilizada…
The Nature Tour Mobile Learning Application. Implementing the Mobile Application in Finnish Early Childhood Education Settings
2014
This paper explores the process and impact of the implementation of the Nature Tour mobile learning application in Finnish early childhood education settings. The interest is to explore whether the concept of Nature Tour mobile application meets the needs of early childhood education in field trips. The idea of the mobile application is to help recording and comparing nature observations as well as to arouse children’s interest in nature. The feasibility of the mobile application was evaluated through a theoretical framework, which includes the core aspects of mobile learning. The evaluation framework consists of two levels titled core level and medium level. Three of the core level aspects…
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…
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…
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 …