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This study analysed the organisation and characteristics of children's creative collaboration. In the study, the organisation of creative collaboration refers to children's initiatives, responses and reciprocal initiative–response sequences that affected the progression of children's creative collaboration. The characteristics refer to the content of children's creative collaboration. The study draws on sociocultural theory, which perceives creativity as a collective phenomenon with a dynamic relation to its social, physical, historical, and cultural world. This study views creative collaboration as a process that enables children's adult- and environment-supported collaborative learning. The research data were generated as a part of a museum project involving 19 preschool-aged children. The project sought to support children's creativity, joint action and collaborative learning. During the project, children worked individually, in small groups, and as a whole group. Videotaped and photographed small group activities, in which each small group designed and created miniature museums, were selected for the analysis. The video data were analysed to identify the initiatives, responses, and characteristics of creative collaboration. The results are in line with the findings from previous research suggesting that children's initiatives and their responses to these initiatives form a strong foundation for creative collaboration, such as shared idea construction, fictional narrative creation, and non-fictional conversation or chitchat. The study provides specific information about preschool-aged children's creative collaboration and indicates that working in small groups and with different projects provides important opportunities for children to be creative while interacting with each other. By applying these results into their teaching practices, early childhood educators are able to more effectively support children's creative collaboration.

Children have been found to be vulnerable to anxiety about nature and the environment, as their emotional skills have not yet been fully developed. Emotions related to the environment are called environmental emotions. Processing and wording those emotions is important for the well-being of the child. It is particularly important now that we are living in an eco-crisis, and many of us are facing irreversible changes in our environment. Strengthening the emotional skills, providing opportunities for discussion, and taking emotions into account is essential to dealing with environmental feelings. Children's literature could be used as one of the easily accessible tools for emotional processing. From children's literature a child can get some help with identifying their own feelings and can go through even untoward things. Children's literature also develops a child's emotional handling skills and readiness to face frightening things. This study examines the emotions related to environment and their descriptions, as well as environmental problems and the attempts to solve them in the Finnish children's literature on environmental problems published in the 2020s. This is a qualitative study utilizing an ecocritical perspective. In this study I analyze the characters emotions in six children's books dealing with environmental problems. I use content analysis as a method of analysis. In addition to the descriptions of the emotions related to environment that appeared in the texts of the works that served as material, various environmental problems and their solutions were also searched from the material. The notion is that the works could be used as tools for literary and environmental education as well. The emotional descriptions of the texts in the works found the most feelings of joy, which were described in all the works in the material. The next most were feelings of sadness and worry. Descriptions were also found of feelings of fear, guilt, anger, enthusiasm, vigor, and hope. Environmental problems were described as climate change, carbon dioxide emissions, species extinction, harmful alien species, waste entering water bodies, debris ending in nature and declining forests. The solutions were described as various everyday actions that everyone can implement in their own lives, as well as larger social solutions, such as laws and regulations.

The subject of this study is mothers' experiences of clothing due a period of breastfeeding. The subject has been barely studied before. The starting point for the examination were my own experiences and the conversations I had had with other mothers. The aim of the study was to analyze and conceptualize how mothers describe an influence of breastfeeding on their clothing. Data has been collected from blog entries of 19 mothers and entries were publicly readable in the Internet. Blog entries were written despite of this study and I made data retrieval using search engines. Analysis was made using qualitative methods such as content analysis, thematizing and typology. The study demonstrated that breastfeeding has influences on dressing in various ways. I divided the descriptions of dress during breastfeeding into four sections according to the content of data: taste in dressing, social environment, physical environment and reasons for the procurement of clothes. These four sections influence on dress, but their weight and meanings are different to different mothers. I formed five different types of mothers from data using typology: sheath dress mother, light work mother, demanding mother, self-indulgent mother and baby bottle mother.

Objectives. The purpose of this research is to find out how change and continuity is presented a primary school history textbook series. The theoretical framework is research of historical thinking, the curriculum of history in primary schools, psychological research in understanding development and time in terms of history. Methods. The research material includes four textbooks and four work books by the publishing company Otava. These books are part of the same Forum series. The research material consists mainly of pictures and texts of European history. The research method used for this thesis is based on a qualitative theory-driven content analysis for textbooks. Based on the theory I developed three researchable concepts: concretization of change and continuity, importance of content and specific content valuation. Results and conclusions. Continuity is made concrete by artifacts such as the built environment and the popular memory locations. Change is made concrete by different inventions. Change and continuity are illustrated by timelines, but the reconstructive element of timelines is not pointed out. Images do not support the illustration of change and continuity. Upper elementary school textbooks used statistics, diagrams and maps to visualize information. General comparison is used to illustrate change. Long-term events are emphasized from prehistoric times to the Middle Ages. The long-term themes do not form a coherent whole. Short-term events are described in detail and are emphasized in recent history. The themes of economic and social structures, wars and urban culture are generally emphasized in the book series. Majority events in the past are compiled together. The past is shown periodically and cyclically, highlighting the linearity of geopolitical history. The research material shows variability of good and bad periods in the past. Individual phenomena are not evaluated. Change and continuity is shown in a larger geopolitical narrative, where the states, rulers and notables mainly take action. The majority of events are shown from a European perspective. Some events are also presented from differing perspectives but this is rare.

The purpose of this study was to find out the kind of changes happening in directing and maintaining the attention of special class pupils while using dog assisted pedagogy. Attention can be divided into three elements i.e. directing the attention, maintaining it and changing its object. In this study I concentrated on the first two notions. Previous studies have shown that dog assisted intervention has positive effects on focusing attention. This is shown among other things in improved attentiveness while doing tasks. This master's thesis is a qualitative case study. The target group of this study consists of eight pupils in a special class in Finland. Each of them has clear features of attention deficit disorder. During the study the pupils were 7 to 8 years old. Collecting the data was carried out by observing the pupils with the help of an observation form and a video recording the material of pupils for three days. A trained education and rehabilitation dog was working in the classroom during two days and on one day it was out of the classroom. The analysis of the material was carried out as quantification. The research was focused on two aspects, getting the pupils' attention and keeping it in two different situations: with the dog present and without the dog in the classroom. According to the results of this study there are positive changes in shifting and maintaining the attention of the pupils when using dog assisted pedagogy. The pupils' ability to focus their attention immediately was increased by 12.2 per cent when the dog was present. In addition, in situations where attention was not targeted immediately, the delay in focusing the attention was reduced by 2.6 seconds. On the basis of analyzing the observation form maintaining attention was improved by 34 per cent and on the basis of the video material by 25.6 per cent when the dog was in the classroom. In addition, the attentiveness of the pupils was less frequently interrupted when the dog was present in the classroom. Based on this study it seems that dog assisted pedagogy has positive impacts on students' attentiveness.

The study analyzed the types and development of transformative agency of teachers in a Change Laboratory intervention in a teacher training school. Theoretical framework is based on activity theoretical research on transformative agency to which the study aims to add new knowledge. Change Laboratory is an activity theoretical method for developing work and organizations. The data for the study consists of three Change Laboratory intervention meetings conducted at the Viikki teacher training school in spring 2015. There were six meetings out of which this study focuses on the first, third and sixth meeting. The transcribed data was analyzed by using qualitative techniques, namely thematic analysis and activity theoretical framework for the identification of the types and development of transformative agency (Haapasaari, Engeström & Kerosuo, 2014). The analysis was enriched by depicting tensions in the development of transformative agency reflecting the dialectics of agency (Rainio & Hilppö, 2016). Quantification was also used to describe the data. Five types of transformative agency depicted by Haapasaari et al. (2014) were found in this data: resisting the change and initiatives, critical analysis of the current activity, explicating new possibilities in the activity, envisioning and developing new models or patterns in the activity, and committing to concrete actions. In the first meeting the most common types were resistance and critical analysis, in the third meeting there were high amount of explicating new possibilities in the activity and envisioning and developing new models or patterns in the activity, and in the sixth meeting the most common type was envisioning and developing new models or patterns in the activity. Based on the data, a new type of transformative agency was also proposed: casting faith in the joint developing. In the speaking turns representing transformative agency, the amount of collectively produced turns increased during the process being highest in the sixth meeting where the participants collectively visualized a new compass model of shared pedagogical leadership. The tensions in the speech reflected the dialectics of agency between the need of belonging and separability and between the need of autonomity and control. The compass model was interpreted to be an attempt to seek for a solution to these tensions.

The main purpose of this study was to figure out how early childhood educators describe and identify ethical education. The theoretical part of this study is about defining ethical education and its purpose and about ethical nature of educational work. The study was an interview study and the analysis method was discourse analysis. The theoretical frame of this study was social constructionism. In this study, the reality was constructed through linguistic interaction. Six workers of kindergarten took part in this study. The analysis of the study was theory-guided. By analysing the interviews five main discourses (in this study: interpretative repertoires) were formed. The five main interpretative repertoires were the following: Ethical education in day-to-day-life, Values, Personal growth as a human being, Child as an ethical thinker and Hectic modern times. After identifying the interpretative repertoires I also wanted to analyse how the repertoires are realized in education and what kind of effects they might have. The results of this study pointed out that early childhood educators described and experienced ethical education as a very important part of educational work. However, interviewees thought that there was too little discussion about ethical education. Ethical education was especially related to each educator's personal growth as a human being. The main focus of describing ethical education was on defining the ultimate purpose of humanity and education. The results of this study also showed that interpretative repertoires of ethical education were likely to be realized in everyday life as they were identified, because ethical education was strongly affected by workers' personal views and not, for example, by national curricula. There is not much earlier research on ethical education in early childhood education. However, the research findings are convergent with the earlier research on ethical education in the elementary school. This study argues that teaching is ethical by nature and the ethical dimensions of early childhood education work should be consciously emphasized.

Objectives. The research on compassion has been studied in many fields but in the context of early childhood education, especially in conflict situations, study of compassion is still missing. The aim of this study, in the light of interaction based “practise perspective” theoretical framework, is to find out the ways in which compassionate acts occur in kindergarten 2 to 5-year-old children`s group in conflict situations, and what enables or hinder compassion in early childhood context. The interaction based theoretical framework shows how compassion is built and develops in interaction with people in different cultural contexts. This study has been conducted as part of “Constituting Cultures of Compassion in Early Childhood Education” (CoCuCo) research project. Methods. The data of this study was gathered by observation in a kindergarten setting over ten days period, approximately five hours per day. 26 children and five adults participated in the study. The current study has implications of collective ethnography due to its naturalistic setting and having, at times, up to four observers in the field at once. Having more than one observer gave opportunities for reflective discussions. 57 conflict situations were found from the data after using qualitative research analysis methods. Compassionate acts were analysed from those conflict situations. Findings. In a kindergarten 2 to 5-year-old children`s group compassionate acts occurred in 15 conflict situations. Compassionate acts, which were helping, defending and comforting, received a child from a teacher, a child from another child and a teacher from a colleague. Verbal forms of compassion were the most common. Teachers ways of dividing tasks and recurring practices in working methods enabled or hindered the ways compassion was expressed. The ways teachers organize kindergarten groups activities, seems to impact the ways compassion occurs in interactional situations.

Objectives. The National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care 2016 is new document and it obligates the actors of ECEC as well as the values and the emphasis of it influence local curricula and implementation of ECEC. There is not yet study of this new document and values are even internationally one of the most neglected areas of research, despite values form a central part of education. Research of compassion has been increasing in Finland and this study is a part of research project “Constituting Cultures of Compassion in Early Childhood Education”. Compassion is central human feeling and capability to compassion is crucial for democracy. The purpose of this study was to find out how the language used in the National Core Curriculum for ECEC 2016 makes meanings, builds and renews the social reality of early childhood education by perspective of compassion and building cultures of compassion. I compared the National Core Curriculum and its draft- version. Research questions were made by the model of Vitikka (2009) so that values and common goals of the curricula and pedagogy are divided to their own questions. In this study I consider, how values and common goals and practices of personnel described in the National Core Curriculum could be interpreted to guide towards building cultures of compassion. Methods. The data of this qualitative study consists of existing documents the National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care 2016 and the draft-version of it. As I knew beforehand the word compassion existed in the draft- version, but it did not occur in the final document. The analysis of data has been influenced by discourse analysis, which is already a theoretical framework. Through the analysis I was in dialogue with the theories of compassion and cultures of compassion. I used coding and process of writing as a help in analysing the data. On basis of the theory I chose for closer scrutiny sentences and mental unities that were connected to compassion, cultures of compassion, participation, parity and equality. Findings. The National Core Curriculum emphasized democracy values, such as participation, parity and equality. The discourse of care and the discourse of rights were simultaneously present. The discourse of sustainable way of life occurred in form of eco-social-culture. This contradicted the ideology of lifetime learning, which is a background assumption of the document. The sentences steered to personnel were in a passive form and were expressed in a strongly fact-based discourse, in which agency was dismissed by using passive form without an active actor. For personnel´s part it was important to understand the meaning of warm interaction and being a model for constructing cultures of compassion. Expanding a circle of compassion towards global compassion could be seen in the data. It is worth pondering if the text of National Core Curriculum could be more mend to be a pedagogical tool for educators. For values part education should be more open to receive the needs adduced by surrounding society to contents of education. I think there can be a problem in child´s active agency in things considering himself, if it is narcissistic way to pursue one´s own advantages rather than it is based on democratic values and considering consequences of acts.

Goals of the study. Studies of compassion in organizations indicate that compassion experienced in work communities strengthens positive emotions and commitment to the work. Compassionate acts are central to an employee’s ability to makes sense of him or herself, co-workers and the work community as a whole. There has been relatively little research about compassion as a phenomenon in early childhood settings. This study aims to explain how master’s students of education sciences depict the construction of compassion and the sensemakings of suffering in narratives. Furthermore, the study explains what the compassionate acts are in the master’s students’ narratives. The study is part of the research project Constituting Cultures of Compassion in Early Childhood Education. Methods. The research material was collected in the lecture room. Master’s students in education were asked to write a one-page narrative about their experiences of compassion in work communities. 26 narratives were collected. Qualitative, theory-driven content analysis was used to analyze the data along with abductive reasoning characterized by a dialogue between empirical perceptions and theoretical ideas and concepts. Results and conclusions. According to the narrative approach, the construction of compassion contained sensemaking processes and compassionate processes. The study by Lilius et al (2008) served as an analytical framework. The sensemakings of suffering included personal concerns, experiences of unfair treatment, workplace conflicts, work-based requirements and concerns, as well as injuries and accidents. The compassionate acts in master students’ narratives contained providing emotional support, giving time and being flexible, providing material support and informative support. It appeared that it was also challenging to express compassion in early childhood settings. It is important to acknowledge humanity in work environments and enhance possibilities for compassion. Even small compassionate acts are central in order to support well-being and mutual trust in work communities.