Browsing by Author "Vaara, Jenni"

The aim of this study was to examine kindergarten teachers' knowledge and expertise produced by two separate study programmes, because currently it's possible to graduate to a kindergarten teacher in Finland via university or polytechnic. My subject of research was the University of Helsinki's Bachelor of Education and the Laurea University of Applied Sciences' Bachelor of Social Services. The method of this study was qualitative content analysis. The subject of examination was the public curriculums of the two study programmes mentioned above. This research's theoretic background was Karila's (1997) knowledge fields (raising, context, child and didacstical knowledge), which describe the central content of finnish kindergarten teachers' expertise. First, the courses were categorized into the different knowledge fields by their content. Then the study credits and the expertise produced by different studies and courses were examined in relation with Karila's knowledge fields. This study shows, that the asset of the University of Helsinki's Bachelor of Education's was didactical knowledge with 67 course credits (44%), where as Laurea University of Applied Sciences' Bachelor of Social Services' studies only had 10 course credits (5.6%) in didactical knowledge. On the other hand, Laurea's Bachelor of Social Services' asset was context knowledge with 120.5 course credits (66.9%), where as Bachelor of Education only had 15 course credits of studies relating to context knowledge. Similar research results has been gained also in other studies. According to the published analysis by OAJ (2003) Bachelor of Social Services and Bachelor of Education supplement each other in kindergarten's work assignments, however profiles based on different expertise should be dissociated from each other. Conclusion of this study is, that the field of early childhood education should recognize and utilize the differing emphasis of the two study programmes, for an example in the division of work.