Browsing by study line "Early childhood education and care + Specialisation studies leading to the qualification of special education teacher"
Now showing items 1-4 of 4
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(2021)In the context of education, ADHD has already been studied quite a bit. However, the way that teachers understand the ADHD diagnosis and what kind of image they create in their speech about children diagnosed with ADHD has received less attention. The purpose of this thesis is to find out what kind of meanings teachers generate for the ADHD diagnosis and what kind of image teachers create about children diagnosed with ADHD. It is important to study the way teachers speak because the way they speak can have either a positive or negative impact on the well-being and learning of children diagnosed with ADHD. I have collected the material for my thesis through an e-form, which has been answered by 70 teachers working in early childhood education and basic education. Respondents to the form were found through social media. The form consisted of open-ended questions and the data was analyzed using discourse analysis methods. I identified a total of six interpretive repertoires for the diagnosis of ADHD: diagnosis as evidence of medical background, diagnosis as a provider of understanding, diagnosis as an explanation of behaviour, diagnosis as a provider of support, diagnosis as a possible label, and diagnosis as a questionable phenomenon. The diagnosis appeared to be mainly necessary and good in these interpretive repertoires, but the possible negative effects of the diagnosis were also brought up. A total of six subject positions were produced for a child diagnosed with ADHD: patient, different child, troublemaker, child in need of support, labelled child and ordinary child / misunderstood child. Teachers described children diagnosed with ADHD mainly through problems and challenges, but the writings also conveyed an empathic attitude towards the child. I hope this thesis will inspire teachers to reflect on their ways of speaking and to think about the origins and consequences of the meanings they have given to the diagnosis.
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(2021)The objective of this research was to find out how parents view daycare centers’ capabilities to recognize and support children with sensory processing disorders. When there are challenges in sensory processing, they are caused by the central nervous system. In the disorder, the brain is not able to parse, analyze, or unify information received from the senses. When the brain isn’t able to process information correctly, the human body won’t function correctly. This makes learning more difficult, as well as tolerating normal daily life and stressful situations. The challenges of sensory processing disorders have mainly been researched from the perspective of occupational therapy. There is hardly any research from educational science or special education’s point of view. This research is based on Jane Ayer’s sensory integration theory and modern research that supports it. This topic was approached from the parents’ perspective. This research was done by using qualitative methods. The data was gathered with a questionnaire and the subjects were chosen through snowball sampling. In total there were 47 subjects. The research was analyzed with the help of content analysis and narrative analysis. According to the findings of the research, daycare centers have low abilities to face children with sensory processing disorders. Understanding the challenges these children experience varied, according to the parents. The parents had experienced stigmatizing, blaming, and belittling of the issues from the daycare centers. In some cases, even the children had been blamed. According to the findings of the research, the symptoms of sensory processing disorders are diverse. Further, the problems of learning and behavior associated with the disorders are severe. One of the biggest difficulties in a daycare environment was that is extremely straining. Allowing the children to have a calm space was viewed as important. According to the research, a lack of information is the main reason why identifying sensory processing disorders is so difficult. Supporting children with these disorders in daycares is insufficient for the same reason. Therapy was seen as a tremendous help and a great asset for the whole family. There is a huge demand for further education and training.
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Päiväkodin johtajien käsityksiä epäammatillisen kasvatus-vuorovaikutuksen piirteistä ja haasteista (2021)The purpose of this study is to elucidate the experiences of ECEC center leaders about the unprofessionalism of educational interaction and the challenges it brings. In addition, the study examines the experience of tackling unprofessionalism and experiences related to managing the phenomenon. The aim is to analyze and describe the perceptions and experiences of managers, as well as their variation. The theoretical framework of the study consists of an examination of educational interaction, unprofessionalism and leadership, as well as a description in the context of early childhood education. The theory takes into account the paucity of previous research on early childhood professionalism and therefore the framework has been partially extended to look at professionalism in other fields as well, such as nursing and medicine. The starting points of the study were a multi-method and phenomenographic study, the data of which were obtained with a semi-structured e-questionnaire. The survey was addressed to municipal ECEC center leaders on the basis of the OAJ member register. In the analysis of qualitative data, context analysis was typically used for phenomenography, and the results of multiple-choice questions (Likert) are pre-sented as percentage distributions. Combining the acquisition and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data aims at a better understanding of a diverse and little-studied phenomenon. Leaders ’experiences of the unprofessional nature of educational interaction varied. However, most situ-ations were interpreted as completely unprofessional. All respondents reported unprofessionalism in their workplace and there was variation in its prevalence. Intervention in the unprofessional profession was generally perceived negatively by managers, although the task could still be perceived as important, co-ercive or obligatory. There were five experiences describing the management of challenging situations: the relationship between the manager and the employee, self-management, pedagogical management, professionalism as a phenomenon, and client work. Unprofessionalism is a multidimensional phenome-non challenging leadership and its definition and identification is important for developing the quality of early childhood education. The key tasks of a leader in terms of shared pedagogical leadership are to address unprofessional situations and to implement ethical reflection and moral decision-making in the work community.
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(2021)The purpose of this article-based master's thesis is to provide more information on the interaction mechanisms between early childhood education and care staff’s experienced social support, stress, educational background and 3-6 years old children’s self-regulation challenges. Previous studies show that staff’s high stress can be associated with self-regulation challenges in children. Social support, on the other hand, is known to buffer stress at workplace. According to previous studies, the early childhood education and care staff’s educational background is also important for the quality of interaction in child groups, especially in stressful situations. A key hypothesis of the study was that the amount of social support received by the early education team members and team’s educational background affect their experience of stress and that has an effect to self-regulation challenges in child groups. The study’s quantitative data were collected in autumn 2017 by DAGIS research project. A total of 83 early childhood education and care teams (202 staff members) and 702 children from two municipalities in southern Finland participated in the study. Research hypothesis was tested with meditation analysis. In the research design, the social support from the su-pervisor and colleagues experienced by the early childhood education team, as well as the team's educational background, were defined as predictors, and the team’s perceived stress was defined as the mediator, which was expected to mediate the effect between children's self-regulation challenges and predictors. The results showed that the team’s experienced stress mediated associations from the social support predictors to the self-regulation challenges in children. On the other hand, the team's educational background had no direct or stress-related indirect association to the self-regulation challenges in children. Greater social support from the supervisor and colleagues was associated with less stress. Staff’s stronger stress, on the other hand, was associated with the greater self-regulation challenges among children. Based on the results, it would be justified to invest in the well-being of early childhood education and care staff as part of the pedagogical quality assessment and pay attention to the preconditions of sensitive human resource management. Further research is also needed, for example, how daycare units’ managers’ workload and stress affect to the interaction and pedagogical quality in child groups. The article " Early childhood education and care staff’s social support, stress and educational background and their associations to 3-6 years old children’s self-regulation challenges " is to be published in the Journal of Early Education Research.
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