Browsing by Author "Kupiainen, Netta"

The purpose of this research is to find out how kindergarten teachers plan their curriculum and activities and how children are involved in the planning process. Also the purpose is to find out what kind of challenges kindergarten teachers experience in their curriculum and activities planning. My research questions are: 1. How kindergarten teachers plan their kindergartens curriculum and activities? 2. How kindergarten teachers estimate that children are involved in the kindergartens curriculum and activities planning process? 3. What kind of challenges kindergarten teachers experience in their curriculum and activities planning? This is a qualitative research. I interviewed three kindergarten teachers. Their work experience varied from 15 to 30 years. Also every one of them had different kind of education background. I used theme interview in this research. In analyzing the interviews I used content analysis. The results in this research were that kindergarten teachers plan their curriculum and activities by themselves and with their colleagues. There were differences in how much planning time the teachers have. Every teacher told that children can participate most in the planning in different kind of everyday situations. The biggest challenges in the planning were trying to find time for planning. From the results it´s possible to make the conclusion that kindergarten teachers use their planning time when children need them the least. Also the children are part of the planning in everyday situations because teacher´s think that every child needs to be confronted. All of the teachers thought that they could use more time in planning, but from the results it´s possible to make a conclusion that nobody is doing any practical changes because it´s not valued enough.