Search results for "education and care"
showing 10 items of 54 documents
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…
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…
‘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…
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…
Kindergarten space and autonomy in construction - Explorations during team ethnography in a Finnish kindergarten
2018
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…
Physical play - How do we inspire and motivate young children to be physically active through play? An international analysis of twelve countries’ na…
2023
Lifelong movement and physical activity (PA) patterns develop during early childhood. Therefore, educators (teachers and practitioners) in early childhood education and care (ECEC) should provide opportunities to support children’s play, PA, and movement development. The World Health Organization (2019) offers new recommendations for PA, for children under five years. The guidelines do not specify the ways ECEC staff can support PA through play. Therefore, this paper investigates, how physical play (PP) is enacted globally. An international policy and practice analysis of twelve countries, (Australia [Victoria], Belgium [Flanders], Canada [Alberta], China, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Portugal,…
Barriers and Facilitators to Toddlers' Physical Activity during the COVID-19 Pandemic, as Perceived by Teachers, Principals and Parents: A Challenge …
2022
The aim of our study was to explore the barriers and facilitators that teachers, principals, and parents face when adapting to COVID-19 pandemic scenario in terms of promoting toddlers’ physical activity (PA). Thirty-four (20 teachers and principals, and 14 parents) semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted from October 2020 to March 2021. The socioecological model has enabled the identification of barriers and facilitators, some of which are related to the pandemic and others which are not. The main results suggest that upon reopening the ECEC institutions, regarding environmental barriers, educators mentioned the impact on the use of space, and parents, the modification of dai…
Corresponsabilità e cura educativa dei genitori nello “zero-sei”: un’esperienza di ricerca e formazione attraversata dalla pandemia
2022
This paper focuses on early childhood educators as possible facilitators of educational co-responsibility with families and, therefore, of inclusive educating communities, in line with the PNRR. A research-training with educators from Palermo, which began before the pandemic and was then reformulated, is presented. For this research, a questionnaire was administered in 2019 to investigate three areas from which, according to the literature, obstacles to an effective educational alliance often arise: educators’ understanding of current family education, what educators think parents to be and ideas of co-responsibility. In 2022, an online questionnaire similar to the first was administered, a…
The early childhood education and care partnership for bilingualism in minority language schooling : collaboration between bilingual families and ped…
2016
Educational partnerships occur at the intersection of early childhood education and care (ECEC), families, and the surrounding community, and have been shown to play a significant role in student success rates in education. There is, however, a gap in research on the role and potential of ‘partnership’ in the case of bilingual families with children enrolled in monolingual minority language ECEC. This study aimed to fill this void by examining parental and practitioner discourses on partnership and on obligations, desires, abilities, and competencies involved in acting on a bilingual childhood in the context of monolingual minority ECEC. Parents in nine Finnish–Swedish bilingual families an…