Browsing by Author "Ekholm, Ifoma Emilia"

This thesis aims to treat what kind of organized activities there are in Finnish Waldorf kindergartens. My research is based on five content areas, which are mentioned in the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care 2016. My goal is to find out how these content areas are emphasized in the Waldorf kindergarten`s activities. I also seek to find out what kind of activities are typical to these kindergartens and what sort of differences and similarities there are between Waldorf kindergartens activities and content areas of National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care 2016. I used qualitative and quantitative content analysis in my thesis. I took a closer look at nine Finnish Waldorf kindergarten`s and one Finnish organic kindergarten`s Facebook-pages. Facebook publications, which I analyzed, were published between August 2017 and May 2018. Excluding one kindergarten all kindergartens were maintained by non-profit organizations. The organic kindergarten is run by a limited corporation. I did the analysis mainly based on publications texts. Pictures and videos were used for supplementary material. All analyzed publications showed organized activities. Based on my thesis it seems that Waldorf kindergartens provide activities for all content areas. However, there were differences on how much each content area occurs. Visual expression, environmental education, physical activity and food education came up the most. Some parts of the content areas did not occur at all and some parts occurred only in some of the kindergartens. Activities related to ethical thinking, different religions and philosophies, technology or health and safety did not occur in all kindergartens. Analyzed publications did not mention media education at all.