Browsing by Subject "välillinen leikin ohjaaminen"

The purpose of this study is to look at how kindergarten teachers conduct play in their group of children under age three. In addition I’m interested in how kindergarten teachers reason their ways of conducting play in real life situation. Typically the play of children under three years old is led by an adult therefore it matters how the kindergarten teacher is conducting play in the kindergarten. In this study I look at the ways of conducting play by dividing it to indirect and direct ways. Similar division is also used in National Curriculum Guidelines on Early Childhood Education and Care in Finland (2005) although the terms differ. The kindergarten teachers’ reasoning behind the play situations is studied in light of the model of pedagogical thinking (Kansanen, 1996). There are three levels in pedagogical level thinking – action level and first and second thinking levels. Two (2) kindergarten teachers working with groups of children under age three took part in this study. Both of them had graduated from university within two years of my study. The research was qualitative and I used interview as a research method. My interview combined theme interview and stimulated recall method. By using theme interview I collected data about different ways to conduct play. Stimulated recall method was used to research the pedagogical thinking of the kindergarten teacher in the play situation. Before the interview I recorded a play situation in which the kindergarten teacher was taking part of. This video material was used as a stimuli in stimulated recall method. I used theory based content analysis to analyze the collected data. The results showed that the kindergarten teachers who took part in this study conducted play using both indirect and direct ways. Only the results gathered from indirect way to conduct play by using visualization were little. When the teachers were reasoning their ways to conduct play they spoke on the action level and the first thinking level. The third level of the pedagogical thinking, the second thinking level, couldn’t be recognized in kindergarten teachers’ reasoning.