Browsing by Subject "day care"

Targets. Lately more emphasis than ever before has been given to bringing forth and taking into account children’s perspective in matters that concern them. It is also purpose of this study to give the voice to children and shed light on their perspective. This study is a part of extensive early childhood education development and research project, Orientaatioprojekti, operated by Helsinki University (Department of Teacher Education), ten municipalities in Keski-Uusimaa area and Hämeenlinna. The research is related to the day care quality evaluation (spring 2012). The main interest of the study was to examine things and situations children told they found unpleasant in day care center, also in relation to child’s gender and age. To better understand the results, the narrations and the consistency of the answers as well as children’s general satisfaction towards the day care were also examined. Methods. The research participants were 573 children, ages ranging from 1 to 8. Parents collected the data by interviewing. Two closed and one open-ended questions were analysed in this research and those questions dealt with children’s general satisfaction in day care center and what do they found unpleasant there. Parents recorded the answers to the web form and the data was then transferred to Excel software. Answers of the closed questions were examined through basic descriptive statistics. The unpleasant things and situations in the open-ended question were analysed through qualitative content analysis. Additionally, the appearance of the answers was also analysed. Used methods there were mostly outlined by researcher herself but some features of discourse analyse were also utilized. Results and conclusions. Most of the children stated that they feel mainly comfortable in day care center. The children mentioned different types of unpleasant things and situations and those were explained in various ways. Above all the challenges in peer relationships were on children’s mind. The peer group pointed out significant but the interaction was not always trouble-free. It seems to be important for children to practice and develop their social skills. Besides of these answers many children found the nap time as a single daily routine to be unpleasant. The number of nap time mentions varied a lot between different sexes and ages. There were also some other differences between the answers of children of different sexes and ages. For example, relatively many of the youngest ones did not answer to the open question at all.

Educational partnership is a working concept introduced in 2003 for the Finnish early childhood edu-cation services. The objective of my research is to study how early child-hood educators describe in their talks cooperation with parents in the context of educational partner-ship. I try to answer to the following questions by analyzing mutual shared cultural concepts used by the educators to structure their daily actions: What is the role of educational partnership in respect to the nature of their relationship with parents, their subject position, scope of their work, objectives of their work and their agency? I collected the research material by means of group interviews carried out in eight day-care centers located in the metropolitan area. The methodology of the research is based on social constructionism and discourse analysis. The analysis is qualitative, material based, detailed analyses of the early childhood educators discourse. The educators described their work through efforts towards equality with parents as well as occupational and professional expertise. Working as equal partners with parents means balancing between conflicting ways of working, thus a change in the professional and expert-focused way of working. The aim to support the growth and development of a child was viewed mainly through the aspects of structure of day care, parental, family, customer orientation and interaction. In the educational partnership talk seems not to have much room for the pedagogy deliberation when the language resources are directing educators attention away from child. Working according to the ideal of educational partnership was interpreted as a change to the early childhood care whereby the customer- and help-oriented as well as unofficial and trust-building cooperation has got foothold. Thus, the educational partnership gives room for expansion of the tasks of the workers. The contextual factors were seen as limiting as well as enabling aspects of educators agency. The responsibility of the education and interfere to the activities of parents was seen problematic, limiting the agency of the workers. On the other hand working as partner was seen as acceptable way to get access to the educational questions concerning families.