Browsing by Subject "educational partnership"

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.