Browsing by Author "Kaplin, Kati"

The National Curriculum Guidelines on Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Finland says that ECEC is developed holistically through observing children's and the educator community's activities and the ECEC environment. The background of this research was that assessment should be based on commonly agreed principles, which are recorded e.g. to unit-specific ECEC curriculum. The objective of this research was to investigate how unit-specific ECEC curriculums have described the physical indoor environment in day-care centres. According to the National Curriculum Guidelines on ECEC, there are four ways of acting that are peculiar to children: playing, physical activities, exploration and artistic experiences and self-expression. The descriptions of physical environment in unit-specific curriculums were observed through above mentioned four ways of acting. In addition to that, the descriptions of four ways of acting were compared to each other, in order to find out, which are the main differences and similarities in relation to physical ECEC environment. Research material was build on unit-specific ECEC curriculums from 18 day-care centres of Helsinki. Target of the research were the descriptions of physical indoor environment in curriculums.The method used in the research was theory-guided content analysis. The analyses were mainly qualitative. The descriptions of physical environment varied widely both quantitatively and by substance. All curriculums contained mentions of playing and artistic experiences and self-expression, but mentions of physical activities and exploration were noticeably fewer. All four ways of acting were mentioned in research material in relation to premises and instruments. Also, principles related to the use of premises and instruments and other more common principles were mentioned in relation to all ways of acting. Instead of that, children were not mentioned even once as an upholders or innovators of physical activities environment and children were mentioned only once regarding to exploration environment. All ways of acting included scenarios of e.g. that environment must provide possibilities of particular way of acting, and both materials and instruments must be available for children. Anyhow, research material did not include any principle or scenario that relates to physical environment that would have occurred in every unit-specific curriculum.