Browsing by Author "Räihä, Riikka"

The purpose of this study was to describe, analyse and determine how the applications of municipalities take places in themes placed by Finnish National Agency for Education which leads the search of government subsidy of developing Early Childhood Education (ECE). The second purpose was to determine the current visions of municipalities of developing their ECE. It was the first time when ECE has possibility to apply for this kind of government subsidy and because of that this study is unique at this moment. With this study we can have information of the current visions of developing ECE. This study includes the features of quantitative and qualitative research and it is like a case study. The research subjects were the applications of government subsidy of developing ECE. The data of this study was the applications which had received the government subsidy. The data consists of 86 applications, 76 Finnish ones and 10 Swedish ones. The content analysis was the method of the data collection. According to results the developing of the culture and pedagogy of ECE were seen more important than the developing of the pedagogical leadership. Developing of participation and agency were seen most important and after them were seen developing of pedagogical methods. National core curriculum for early childhood education 2016 has challenged applicants to reflect their culture of ECE and the need of developing. Research of ECE like basis of developing was quite small.