Browsing by Subject "laadun rakennetekijät"

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract Finnish early childhood education (ECE) is having a time of transition, and in 2018 a renewed Law of ECE was accepted. In the same year Guidelines and recommendations for evaluating the quality of early childhood education and care was published. ECE has been widely represented in the media both in regard to the current reforms as well as its perceived problems. The discussion on the state, goals, and quality of ECE has been conducted via mass media and media itself has had a central role in promoting this conversation. Previous research has shown that public discussion has a central role in decision making and democracy (e.g. Kunelius 2003; Karppinen & Matikainen 2012; Kortti 2016). In the current study the aim was to discover what kind of themes and contents have been present in the “opinion pieces” newspaper sections, what kind of themes are recurring and which tied to specific events, and also to analyse the background of the writers. The current study is qualitative and the analysed data contains 124 opinion pieces from the digital edition of Helsingin Sanomat (HS.fi) across a four year span (2017-2020). The data was collected with the HS.fi search engine using different search words and choosing those opinion pieces in which ECE was the primary or secondary content. The data was analysed with a data-driven approach, forming hierarchical classes of the contents of the opinion pieces and their writers’ backgrounds. The analysis revealed that based on the backgrouds of the writers, there were eight groups: caregivers, staff, employers, workers’ unions, specialists, university ECE teacher education staff, decision-makers and other writers. Based on the variety of backgrounds it is possible to deduce that ECE is of interest to many different people, even if they do not have direct contact with educational work. Recurring topics include deficits in the service system, problems in combining family and worklife, quality and resources in ECE, and its societal impact in promoting equality. Specific events included comments on the passed ECE law, the teacher shortage in ECE, removing the home-care benefit, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the data, the current state of ECE was seen as negative regardless of the writer’s background, and its quality as poor due to the lack of appropriate resources.