Browsing by Subject "Early Childhood Education and Care staff"

Objectives. The Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) has defined quality indicators for early childhood education and care (ECEC), which can be used to assess the quality of ECEC. According to the law (540/2018), ECEC is defined by a self-assessment obligation, which makes it possible to evaluate the pedagogical activities produced by ECEC staff. The study examined the quality of ECEC, from the perspective of quality process factors. The study was conducted based on self-assessments of ECEC staff. The aim of the study was to describe the factors that weaken the process quality of ECEC and to find out the effect of the educational background of ECEC staff on self-assessments. The study also examined development targets for the process quality of ECEC. Methods. The study was conducted in a mixed method manner using data and method triangulation. The research material was collected with an e-questionnaire. The survey was sent via social media to Facebook groups for ECEC staff. The study material consisted of 202 respondents and 260 open-ended responses. The research material was analyzed by appropriate methods using qualitative (content analysis) and quantitative (one-way analysis of variance) analysis. Results. The results of the study show that shortcomings in ECEC resources, professionalism and interprofessional co-operation were perceived as factors that weaken the process quality of ECEC. The results of the study also show that the self-assessments of highly educated staff differed from the self-assessments of vocational education staff, for one attribute. The research shows the need for comprehensive development work on the quality of early childhood education. Pedagogical activities in early childhood education must be enabled with sufficient resources and a well-functioning culture, and the well-being of staff must be safeguarded.