Browsing by Subject "känsloutbrott"

The purpose of this studie was to research what kind of practical tools the pedagogic staff in one unit of early childhood education feel they have to meet the needs of children with externalizing behaviors. The study also looked at what kind of tools the ECE-staff used in daily interaction with these children and how the children's needs were taken into consideration in the daily activities. Recent studies have shown that externalizing behaviors has become more common among children in early childhood education, and therefore the subject is current. According to Ahonen (2017) the children who show externalizing behaviors are at risk of later challenges in life and it would therefore be important to support these children at an early age. To adequately support the children the ECE-staff needs to have a good understanding of the background factors to the behaviors and also awareness of the central tools to support the children. The data in this studie consist of five individual interviews, two group interviews and 17 hours of observations of the ECE-staff in the groups. The studie was conducted in two ECE-groups in one Swedish speaking Finnish ECE-unit during the fall of 2021. The data were analyzed with the method qualitative content analysis. The result of the study shows that the ECE-staff experience the children's externalizing behavior difficult when they do not know the cause of the behavior or when the behavior is unexpected. They felt it was easier once they had found methods and tools that worked for the child. Another challenging factor was if there were many children with externalizing behavior or if there were shortages of staff. The ECE-staff in this study all met the children with warm interaction and were all aware of the importance of warm interaction. They also divided the children into smaller groups and used visual aids to support the children's executive functions. The ECE-staff mainly worked by handling the situation after it occurred and by forming the activities and environment so that the behavior decreased. In the data there was little that indicated that the personnel actively worked to strengthen the children's skills and competencies to give the children a chance to learn to handle the situations. The ECE-staff mentioned that they felt that the teaching material they had to support socioemotional development was not adequate to their needs. The ECE-staff in this study did not feel they had gotten enough information about the subject or tools in their own education programs. The main source of information about tools and methods had been collegially support and mentorship between colleagues.