Browsing by Author "Ärilä, Heli"

Children’s participation as learners and members of the community has become an important pedagogical value in preschool education and in the whole educational system. Hearing children’s views has also been emphasized within the sphere of science but learning has remained a subject and study area mainly defined by adults. The aim of this study is to bring out the children’s own perspective and to describe what kind of things the preschool children are interested to learn and what they themselves tell about learning, transmitted by the pedagogical documentation method. 26 children and two adult interviewers from one day-care center in Uusimaa region participated in this study. The research data consisted of 156 learning wishes drawn by the children and of videotaped interviews in which the learning wishes and children’s thoughts about preschool were discussed, led by the adults’ questions. Based on the inductive analysis process the research was directed at children’s interest and narration about learning. The study was carried out as a case study with child perspective, combining narrative thematic analysis and content analysis methods. The children were mostly interested to learn action-based and visible skills which originated from children’s environment, communities and their own experiences. The most popular were physical skills and the biggest group of cognitive skills was reading and writing, chosen largely by girls. The children were also interested in concrete challenges and ability experiences offered by the preschool exercises. This had narrative resemblance to children’s other positive expressions of their readiness to learn and to develop their skills. Narrated by the children, learning appeared as the increase of skills, knowledge and autonomy, whereas play and exploration had a little role in the children’s own descriptions. It would be useful to support children’s awareness of their cognitive learning in preschool, to reinforce children’s positive self-image as learners. It is also important to strengthen both boys’ and girls’ interest in reading and multiliteracy skills, in ways that are meaningful to children. It is possible to aim at supporting children’s resilience, co-operation, thinking and self-image as learners by their own learning objectives. Children’s objectives also create opportunities to build connections between children’s communities and learning environments, from children’s own perspective.