Browsing by Subject "esiopetus"

Tiivistelmä - Referat – Abstract Several studies show that early childhood education and care, and in particular pre-primary education, play a key role in supporting and preventing learning difficulties. However, it is common for a child to not receive a learning difficulty diagnosis before school age. Late diagnosis is often caused by the individuality and comorbidity of learning difficulties with other developmental challenges. It is important that early childhood education teachers, who work in pre-primary education, identify children at potential risk of learning difficulties. At the same time, they must also be familiar with the mechanisms of learning difficulties and effective methods for supporting and preventing potential difficulties at school. The aim of this study was to study the methods used in pre-primary education to support and prevent learning difficulties. The aim was also to find out how consciously and on what grounds preschool teachers choose different methods to support their teaching. At the center of this study were methods related to reading and mathematical skills. Three research questions were used to find answers to these topics. The research data was collected in December 2020 and January 2021 by interviewing five early childhood education teachers. They all worked in a preschool from the City of Helsinki daycare. The data was collected by a semi-structured theme interview and the analysis method was the qualitative content analysis. Based on this study, teachers considered it important to support and prevent learning difficulties already in pre-primary education. They felt that they had sufficient capacity and knowledge regarding learning difficulties and that they could identify the children who might need support for learning. Teachers used mostly general pedagogical methods to support children's learning in reading and mathematics. Methods were mostly based on curriculum for the primary education. Teachers emphasized physical activity, functionality, and integration with other learning content to support reading and mathematical skills. Awareness of available methods related to the prevention of learning difficulties was clearly low and incomplete. Furthermore, the use of various materials and methods was not clearly justified in relation to the prevention of possible difficulties. Teachers chose methods, based on their own habits and material that was available in the daycare center. Preschool-teachers' overall awareness of learning difficulties, their occurrence, and preventive factors and methods, appears to be low and incomplete.

In Finland, children transition from pre-primary education to primary education in the year when the child turns seven years old. Children are already preparing for their schooling in pre-primary education by practising their school readiness skills. However, there is a major variation in the skill levels of pupils in the first grade of education. The concept of the readiness of the school has emerged alongside children’s individual school readiness skills, describing the school’s readiness to take in learners with varying levels of skills. As a result, the focus of the examination of children’s school readiness has increasingly shifted from the development of schools and education. This study explores the views of pre-primary and primary education teachers on the ideal and actual school readiness of children and the readiness of today’s schools to receive learners whose skill levels vary. The research data included three group interviews participated by nine teachers in total. The groups included pre-primary school teachers, class teachers and special needs teachers with experience in teaching pupils in pre-primary and primary education. The data were collected using the semi-structured theme interview method carried out via a remote connection in December 2022. The obtained data were analysed using data-driven content analysis. The school readiness skills that the teachers perceived as ideal were concerned with basic everyday skills, academic skills, fine motor skills, working skills and socio-emotional skills. Especially basic everyday skills, working skills and socio-emotional skills were considered particularly important school readiness skills. Above all, the interviewees wished that children would be able to act in a large group, taking other children into consideration. The teachers noted that there has been progress in children’s academic readiness recently, whereas there are shortcomings in their working skills and socio-emotional skills. The teachers had a positive view of the school’s readiness to take in learners with different skill levels, but they also considered the school’s resources insufficient. The current resources are inadequate to provide pupils with enough of the individual support that they need. Group sizes at schools should be made smaller and the number of adults should be higher. The teachers also considered alternative ways for starting school that would better serve the beginning of each pupil’s school path.

The objective of this study was to identify what factors in the group play of preschool age children promote or inhibit collaborative learning. Additionally, the study explores what factors would promote or inhibit collaborative learning in group play when an early childhood educator is participating. The study contributes to the understanding of how early childhood educators through their actions can influence the development of collaborative learning. The study is a qualitative study and the research material has been acquired through observing and video recording children's group play in a preschool group’s story-based play mornings, from which ten play episodes have been selected for this study. The research approach is narrative and the group play of children and educators forms stories to be researched. The research material has been processed using theory directing content analysis, and the results of the analysis have been further processed into quantitative format. The study applies primarily Koivula’s (2010) research concerning factors promoting and inhibiting collaborative learning. Additionally, the behaviour of the early childhood educators as a promoter or inhibitor of collaborative learning has been analysed from the viewpoints expressed in the research of Juutinen (2018) and Storli (2013). In this study during the whole preschool year there were factors promoting collaborative learning in the large majority of play episodes and factors inhibiting collaborative learning in over one third of the play episodes. During the autumn there were factors promoting collaborative learning in almost all of the play episodes, while during the spring factors inhibiting collaborative learning were found in half of the play episodes. Factors promoting or inhibiting collaborative learning in the behaviour of the early childhood educators were both found in one third of the play episodes. The early childhood educators acted less as an inhibitor collaborative learning during the autumn than during the spring. The main result of the study is that educators didn’t guide an immigrant child to group play with the other children, but instead guided the child to play only alone with the educator. The study by Juutinen (2018) also noted situations in which educators would have through her actions promoted a sense of togetherness but didn’t make use of these opportunities. According that study as well as by Juutinen (2018) togetherness should be supported so that there would be space in group play for all kinds of members of the group.

This master’s thesis is a case study. The aim of this study was to find out what kind of qualities would differ in the drawings of the intelligent and the ordinary person made by the pre-primary students. The study also aimed to discover if the mindset theory by Carol Dweck (2016) would be visible in the drawings and in the interviews. The study was based on the mindset theory. The theory divides people in two groups based on their views about the malleability of their intelligence. The one’s with fixed mindset and the others with growth mindset. Fixed mindset means that intelligence is seen as a fixed entity that cannot be changed. The growth mindset means that one can develop and become more intelligent by putting effort on the learning. The mindset theory is connected to learning, setting goals and surviving from set-backs. The method used in this study was qualitative dominant mixed method research. 25 pre-primary students aged six to seven took part in the study. The students first drew two pictures: one with an intelligent person and one with an ordinary person. This part of the study was based on the previous studies by Räty, Komulainen, Skorokhodova, Kolesnikon and Hämäläinen (2011) and Räty and Snellman (1997). Then the children took part in a group interview. The interview was a focused interview, and the questions were based on the mindset theory. The pictures and the interview were analyzed using theory based content analysis. The pictures were partly analyzed using quantitative analyzing methods. The pre-primary students see intelligent and ordinary person in a quite similar way. Only a few things separated the persons from one and another. The differences were about the choices on clothing, accessories or hairstyle. More imaginative features were involved in only a few pictures. The drawing task was hard for the children so the mindset theory did become visible especially in the situation where the children had to figure out how to draw the intelligent person. The children with fixed mindset did not want to start drawing, said that their drawing was no good or tried to hide it from other children. The children with growth mindset started to draw immediately, had a clear vision and did not care about other children’s opinions. The end result was that although there was not a clear difference between the drawings, the task itself showed how the mindset theory is valid also within the pre-primary students.

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract The concept of multiculturalism is often used in the world of education. In connection with this concept, we also often talk about immigrants. However, every child, group of children, or work community, for example, can be thought of as multicultural. For this reason, when using the term multiculturalism, one should be particularly sensitive and define what kind of phenomenon the concept describes. Each pre-school group has children from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and children are influenced by a wide range of cultures outside the pre-school. Pre-primary education should therefore be culturally and linguistically aware, it should take into account the linguistic and cultural background of each child and family, so that each child receives support in building and developing their cultural identity. Diversity should therefore be a prerequisite for learning, allowing each child to build and grow his or her own cultural identity on an equal footing, and through which children can also perceive and experience different cultures and languages in a safe environment. The purpose of this master's thesis was to find out what kind of things children bring up from their own cultural background and what kind of things they notice in their peers. The dissertation focuses especially on the interaction between children in the daily life of pre-school education in a group where 16 children spoke a language other than Finnish as their native language. The dissertation was carried out as an ethnographic observational study. Participatory observation as well as covert observation have been used as observation means, various interaction situations between children have also been videotaped. The material has been analyzed in the way of a discussion analysis, and the observations have been divided into four different categories according to the principles of thematic design. The material consists of observations collected during the spring of 2021 in a pre-school group in Helsinki. With the written permission of the guardians, 19 pre-school children participated in the study. Based on the observational data, it can be concluded that the children of the preschool group were interested in each other’s cultural backgrounds and were proud of their own backgrounds, especially their knowledge of different languages. The children asked each other about their mother tongue, were interested in learning them and, for example, wanted to teach each other their own mother tongue. Children discussed ways of different countries as well as different religions, especially in eating situations, comparing, for example, what kind of food was offered in pre-school education and what was eaten at home or wondering why some children ate pork and some did not. Religions also appear in the observational material in discussions about gods of different religions or searching for children from the same religion in a group. The importance of a sense of belonging is emphasized in the material strongly. The children care about belonging to their own group, but also take care of the other children in the group. This can be seen, for example, in noticing a lack of common language skills, for example during play time. From the observational data, it can be concluded that the feeling of belonging to a group is important for children and children may distort their language skills or say that they belong to a religious group to which they did not really belong in order to feel part of the group.

Objectives. In recent years worldview education in early childhood education and pre-school education has turned from religious education into non-confessional worldview education. The aim of this study is to examine what worldview education is like in early childhood education and pre-school education in Helsinki. This study investigated worldview education in national and local curricula of early childhood education and care and pre-school education. In addition, this study explored how worldview education is put into practice in the early childhood education and pre-school education in Helsinki. Methods. The data was collected in spring 2019 by analysing the curricula for early childhood education and care and pre-school education and by a qualitative survey sent to the workers of the early childhood education and pre-school education in Helsinki. The data was analysed by using qualitative content analysis. Results and conclusions. The National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (2016) emphasized familiarizing oneself with different cultures and worldviews, acting in the diverse Finnish society and enhancing equality. Helsinki’s local Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (2017) had the same themes but they were emphasized differently. The themes in worldview education in the National Core Curriculum for Pre-School Education (2014) were uniform with The National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Educa-tion and Care. Also, Helsinki’s local Curriculum for Pre-School Education (2016) was the same as the national curricula. In practice, the implementation of worldview education in both early childhood education and pre-school education differed from the legally binding curricula. In early childhood education the worldview education was not predominantly put into practice at all, or it was shown as conversations, as Christian education or as restrictions in the every-day life. In pre-school education the worldview education was most often shown as conversations but also as Christian education, as restrictions in everyday life or was not implemented at all. Therefore, in practice, worldview education meets many, but not all, of the objectives set by the curricula. In pre-school education the worldview education corresponds the curriculum slightly more than in early childhood education. Nonetheless, the practices in both early childhood education and pre-school education need to be developed when the practice is wanted to correspond the legally binding curricula.

Children’s participation as learners and members of the community has become an important pedagogical value in preschool education and in the whole educational system. Hearing children’s views has also been emphasized within the sphere of science but learning has remained a subject and study area mainly defined by adults. The aim of this study is to bring out the children’s own perspective and to describe what kind of things the preschool children are interested to learn and what they themselves tell about learning, transmitted by the pedagogical documentation method. 26 children and two adult interviewers from one day-care center in Uusimaa region participated in this study. The research data consisted of 156 learning wishes drawn by the children and of videotaped interviews in which the learning wishes and children’s thoughts about preschool were discussed, led by the adults’ questions. Based on the inductive analysis process the research was directed at children’s interest and narration about learning. The study was carried out as a case study with child perspective, combining narrative thematic analysis and content analysis methods. The children were mostly interested to learn action-based and visible skills which originated from children’s environment, communities and their own experiences. The most popular were physical skills and the biggest group of cognitive skills was reading and writing, chosen largely by girls. The children were also interested in concrete challenges and ability experiences offered by the preschool exercises. This had narrative resemblance to children’s other positive expressions of their readiness to learn and to develop their skills. Narrated by the children, learning appeared as the increase of skills, knowledge and autonomy, whereas play and exploration had a little role in the children’s own descriptions. It would be useful to support children’s awareness of their cognitive learning in preschool, to reinforce children’s positive self-image as learners. It is also important to strengthen both boys’ and girls’ interest in reading and multiliteracy skills, in ways that are meaningful to children. It is possible to aim at supporting children’s resilience, co-operation, thinking and self-image as learners by their own learning objectives. Children’s objectives also create opportunities to build connections between children’s communities and learning environments, from children’s own perspective.

The aim of the research was to investigate the possibilities of an augmented reality (AR) application as a digital storytelling tool to support children's emotional skills in preschool. Previous studies have shown the versatile utilization opportunities of AR in education. However, the use of AR applications for learning emotional skills has been relatively unexplored. The research aimed to answer questions about how children recognize and name emotions, as well as how they express the cause-and-effect relationships of emotions while interacting with a child partner using the AR application and presenting the stories they created with the help of the AR application. The research's purpose is to increase knowledge about the possibilities of AR in emotional education in preschool and to develop new innovative teaching practices in the field. The research involved the development, pilot testing and qualitative analysis of a teaching intervention, in which 14 preschool students learned emotional skills using an AR application as a digital storytelling tool. The research data was collected by videorecording the preschool group's work in AR emotionworkshops and analyzed using content analysis. The research can be characterized as a qualitative design based research, where the design model of AR emotionworkshops served as the research design. In the children's AR stories where they recognized and named emotions, two narrative forms were observed: stories where the agent was the child themselves and stories where the agent was an imaginary character. Three-quarters of all episodes involving the recognition and naming of emotions were related to emotions experienced by imaginary AR characters. These stories mainly addressed emotions of anger, sadness, and fear. In the children's narratives where they recognized and named emotions while portraying themselves as the agent, joy was predominantly expressed. Working with tablet computers together with a child partner facilitated interaction and peer learning among the children during the AR emotionworkshops, and they supported each other in recognizing and naming emotions. Through play and imagination, the children reflected their everyday emotional experiences by portraying cause-and-effect relationships of emotions in their stories. The findings of the research align with previous studies on children's AR play, where the real world, the mirror world of AR, and the story world allow children to explore real world experiences in a mirror world through imagination and play.

In a recent pedagogical debate the animation is seen as a result of a child-oriented education. It includes terms communality, agency and participant, which were studied at VKK-metro's participation- and Billding bridges -projects. In a social pedagogy and a free education is known sosio-cultural animation, that has come to Finland by Leena Kurki (2000). In this study a connection to Kurki's sociocultural animation is searched from todays's child-oriented thoughts and from Vygotsky's sociocultural theory. This study applies and experiments sociocultural animation by the means of drama, and examines in which ways animation appears as communality, agency and participation in a kindergarten preschool group. Methods: This study was made in spring 2012 in a day-carecenter near Helsinki and it took six days. The target group of the educational experiment was 24 children. This study applies qualitative research methods and there are forms of action research, where the researcher is a facilitator and participating observer.The data collection method was observation, notebook and video- and research diary. In the analysis of the data is utilized content analysis. Results and conclusions: Communality was seen at the Zone of proximal development as peer learning for example in drawnings. At the emotional Zone of proximal development animation created animation. This was shown as cheering of others, appreciation of drama performances and as enthusiasm in ones own activity. Negotiations where often non-verbal and handled through operation. Agency was shown as expression and realization or non-realization of ideas. If necessary, help was sought from a more capable individual and an adult was sought for attention and acknowledgement. Participation was shown as mutual ideation, doing, evaluation, decision making and diverse creation of culture between adults and children. Hence animation increased the culture of communality where children can learn, open up and encourage themselves to act proactively and creatively to achieve a mutual goal, a drama performance.

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract Tavoitteet. Esiopetuksen keskeisenä tehtävänä on valtakunnallisten esiopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteiden mukaan tukea lapsen kielellisten taitojen kehitystä ja vahvistaa kiinnostusta kirjoittamista ja lukemista kohtaan. Esiopetuksella on suuri merkitys lasten oppimisen tuen tarpeiden varhaisessa havaitsemisessa, tuen antamisessa ja samalla vaikeuksien ehkäisemisessä. Vaikka esiopetus Suomessa perustuu yhteisille opetussuunnitelman perusteille, vaikuttaa siltä, että lapset ovat koulun aloittaessaan edelleen hyvin erilaisessa alkavan luku- ja kirjoitustaidon vaiheessa. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli selvittää mitä kielen ja vuorovaikutuksen alueen tavoitteita, sisältöjä ja toimintatapoja esiopetuksen valtakunnallisissa ja paikallisissa opetussuunnitelmissa esiintyy esioppilaan lukemisesta ja kirjoittamisesta sekä miten esiopettajat toteuttavat esioppilaan lukemaan ja kirjoittamaan opettamista Menetelmät. Tutkimuksen aineistona käytettiin valtakunnallisia esiopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteita, paikallista esiopetuksen opetussuunnitelmaa sekä neljän eri esiopetusyksikön opetussuunnitelmia. Lisäksi haastateltiin näitten esiopetusyksiköiden esiopettajia, joista kaksi toimi osana päiväkodin ja kaksi osana koulun esiopetusta. Teemahaastattelut nauhoitettiin ja litteroitiin sekä analysoitiin aineistolähtöisen ja teoriaohjaavan sisällönanalyysin keinoin käyttämällä Beredayn vertailevan analyysin mallia. Tulokset ja johtopäätökset. Tutkimuksessa selvisi, että esiopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteisiin kirjatut tavoitteet ovat erittäin kattavat sisältäen kaikki tärkeimmät tavoitteet tukemaan lapsen sukeutuvan lukutaidot kehittymistä. Paikallinen esiopetussuunnitelma perustui valtakunnallisille perusteille lisäyksenään kirjaston ja tietotekniikan käyttö. Eroavaisuutta oli yksikkökohtaisissa opetussuunnitelmissa, koulujen esiopetussuunnitelma oli tehty esi- ja alkuopetuksen sekä erityisopettajien yhteistyönä ja siinä esiopetuksen tavoitteet, sisällöt ja menetelmät kuvattiin ja avattiin selkeämmin kuin päiväkodin esiopetussuunnitelmissa. Kaikki esiopettajalla käyttivät lasten taitoja pohjana tavoitteiden asettamiselle ja toiminnan suunnittelulle. Systemaattisimmin lasten oppimista seurattiin koulujen esiopetusryhmissä, joissa lapset saivat tarvittaessa viikoittaista erityisopettajan tukea. Koulun esiopetuksessa oli käytössä huomattavasti enemmän tietotekniikkaa. Päiväkotien esiopettajien suunnitteluajan puute haittasi merkittävästi laadukasta suunnittelua.