Browsing by Author "Puumalainen, Julia"

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract The aim of the study is to find out the ability of teachers to act equally and anti-racist in a group of children. This study examines how much the goals of equality and anti-racism set by the Finnish Assosiation of Teacher Education (Sool ry) for teacher education actually differs from the content of teacher education in the field of early childhood education at the University of Helsinki before year 2020. Equality in the context of early childhood education and training means that every person is equal regardless of any person-related reason such as their ethnic or national origin (Equality Commissioner, 2019). The purpose of anti-racism in the context of education and upbringing is to achieve social justice among children and to prevent the formation of otherness. (Alemanji, 2018, 5). Educational institutions are not areas free of racism. However, it is important to note that it is different to declare racism in a school, for example, than to declare the whole institution racist, as the latter makes it difficult for change to review and recognize its own activities and the racism that affects them (Rastas, 2018, p. 90). The implementation of this study is divided into three parts: descriptions of the research context and descriptions of the methods of data analysis. In these subsections, the context of the research is opened and the qualitative research and the chosen method are briefly described. The study is thus a review of the literature, which is qualitative research. The review examined the Finnish Association of Students 'Teachers' document “Objectives for Teacher Education” and compared it with the contents of the curriculum for students studying to become early childhood teachers in Helsinki. Content analysis and, more precisely, thematic designing have been used as the method of analysis of the study, which has been used to find key topics in the material used. All in all, thematic design is about sharing and grouping material according to different topics (Tuomi et al., 2013, 93). This research set-up thus compared the objectives of teacher education and the actual course contents of early childhood teacher education in relation to the themes of equality, anti-racism and social justice. This literature review showed how significant the themes related to equality and social justice are in the field of education. The work of a teacher is guided by several laws and documents that bind and guide their daily activities. One important goal for teacher education is the teacher’s readiness to be able to teach different contents of social action, such as equality (SOOL, 2019). This includes equality education, cultural diversity, democracy education and social justice. Although equality and non-discrimination are key themes in almost every document guiding education and training, these are mentioned quite sparingly in the objectives of compulsory courses in the field of early childhood education. However, this is partly due to the fact that universities are independent units, which is why they can decide on their own curricula and the implementation of their goals (Karjalainen et al. 2007; Vitikka et al. 2014, 42). However, when looking at the content of the compulsory courses, multiculturalism was directly mentioned in the objectives of the two courses and other themes related to the sub-chapter on equality in this context were not directly mentioned. However, pre-primary education has a role to play in education as well as in promoting equality, which is why teachers should have sufficient capacity to guarantee equal education.