Browsing by Subject "päiväkoti"

The specific purpose of this research is to study how kindergarten teachers conceptualize worldview education and its practice in early childhood education. The data is based on a survey conducted in spring 2017 (n = 143) in two districts in the Helsinki area. The questionnaire contained both interpretable many choice questions and interpreted open-ended questions. The kindergarten teachers' answers were analysed by means of factor analysis and content analysis. A factor analysis of the survey data identified three main aims of worldview education: 1. child-centered reflection and responding to the child's questions, 2. enabling children to become familiar with cultural traditions and content and 3. accepting the diversity of view in the goal of worldview education. Out of these three goals, the kindergarten teachers placed the most emphasis on child-centered reflection and responding to the child's questions and the least emphasis on familiarizing them with traditions and content. Out of the different content areas of religious education in early childhood education, the kindergarten teachers preferred cultural and seasonal events and festivals, examining worldviews in daily situations, such as dressing or meals and excursions to churches at Christmas time and during spring. The spiritual background of the kindergarten teacher had a significant impact on how important the kindergarten teachers considered the goals and different content areas of the worldview education. Nine dimensions were found from the assessments of the kindergarten teachers. The teachers focused on the following aspects, that are listed here in the order of their frequencies: 1. annual celebrations and events. 2. answering to children's questions, 3. dealing with ethical questions 4. examining worldviews present in the group of children 5. other aspects 6. stories and picture books related to worldviews 7. talking about death 8. visits by the parish workers 9. worldview education is not practically practiced. Based on the study, it can be concluded that the kindergarten teachers, for whom the spiritual things are not significant, would need particular support with worldview education. The National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education is a legally binding ordinance for the first time 1st of August 2017, so the observation of this study is particularly timely.

The aim of this study is to describe the expectations and experiences related to the promotion of the pedagogical competence of kindergarten teachers in multilingual and multicultural day-care centres, the operations of which have been supported by raising the number of kindergarten teachers from one to two in the care groups. This was enabled by the "positive discrimination funding" offered to those City of Helsinki day-care centres where the number of multilingual and -cultural children exceeds 30%. Three main questions emerged as the research questions. 1. What kind of expectations do kindergarten teachers in a multilingual and multicultural day-care centre have at the beginning of the enhancement of their pedagogical competence? 2. What kind of experiences have kindergarten teachers in a multilingual and multicultural day-care centre acquired during the enhancement of their pedagogical competence? 3. What similarities and differences exist between the expectations and experiences of kindergarten teachers with respect to the enhancement of their pedagogical competence? The sub-questions of the two main questions relate to the activities of the care group, collaboration with the work community, cooperation partners and parents, and any other expectations and later experiences. The study is qualitative, and interviews served as the method for collecting information. The informants included six kindergarten teachers working in three day-care centres of city. Theme interviews as a research method were carried out twice for each informant; one in the autumn and one in the spring. Results include such aspects as small-group pedagogy, the pedagogy of play, child observation, activities planning, teamwork and cooperation with the other kindergarten teacher working in a Finnish-as-a-second-language setting in the area. In contrast, the development of professional identity and the processing of professional and pedagogical competence are already mentioned as expectations by two kindergarten teachers, but identified as experiences by several of them.

Aims. Touch is a natural part of interpersonal interaction and it occurs universally in different cultures. Touch has mentioned to have plenty of positive effects on child’s development and well-being. This study deals with short touches, which last less than for five seconds, within adult-child interaction in 3-5-year old children’s kindergarten group. The importance of studying short touches arises through their smallness. They are widely used within adult-child interaction, but they still easily escape one’s attention and stay unnoticed. Through research and knowledge, short touches could put into operation as a pedagogical tool in order to improve positive interaction and children’s well-being. The aim of this study is to find out how much and in which situations short touches are used in kindergarten between an adult and a child, and also what kind of these short touches are by nature. Methods. The data of this study was collected by observing a wide video recording that had been shot in one kindergarten. The data had material in different age groups but this study ended up to consider a group of 3-5-year old children. The analysis methods used were both content analysis and multimodal interaction analysis. All short touches were collected from the defined data and after that, they were analysed by their nature and divided by their nature definitions to affectionate, shepherding or assisting touches. Results and conclusions. The results showed that there appears plenty of short touches between children and adults in different situations in kindergarten. Most commonly short touches were used in transition situations and the least in waiting situations. Short touches were used as an expression of affection, as a tool of bodily guidance and to assist children getting dressed or undressed in transition situations. On the grounds of results, it can be said that short touches seem to be widely used and multidimensional tool of interaction between an adult and a child in kindergarten. Due to the size of the data, the results cannot be widely generalized. But then again by way of this study and its results, we have indications that short touches are meaningful in kindergarten environment and through that, we can also widen the overall picture of adult-child interaction and things that affect it.

This study examines bullying in Finnish day-care center groups. Bullying has been studied a lot but bullying among young children has been brought up only recently. Main goal of this study was to find 5-6 years old children who are bullies and get their opinion about bullying and how embloyees intervene bullying among children in day-care. Recent studies has shown that bullying among children before school age can be physical, psychological and verbal. The research material of the study comprises a survey that was made online in day-care centers in Vantaa 2011. The survey was carried out as part of the Helsinki university's earlychildhood education project "bullying in day-care settings". From this survey five bullies was found: two girls and three boys. From the same day-care group was along two children as comparatives. This is a qualitative research and as research method was semi-structured interviews by interviewing 15 children: 8 girls and 7 boys. According to the results of the study, there are bullies in day-care center groups and they vary a lot. They can be confident, week and aggressive. Bullies use mostly physical ways to bully, one of the bullies used only psychological and verbal ways. Children described bullying mostly in physical ways. Day-care centre's employees interfere in bullying by giving children some kind of penalty. Mostly mentioned penalty was "thinking chair". Result of the study is also that employees in day-care centers recognise children who are bullies.

The purpose of this thesis was to describe mistakes occurring in daycare and the emotions they evoke, as well as how these mistakes are reported to outsiders. Mistakes occurring at work have raised internationally steady amounts of attention throughout the entire 2000s. Earlier studies have mainly focused on the best ways to avoid mistakes or to learn from them, as well as on factors that predispose to mistakes and failures. However, there are very few Finnish studies on this topic. Additionally, earlier studies have mainly ignored the individual view; thoughts and emotions in a situation where a worker makes a mistake. This thesis investigates the types of narratives told about mistakes. Further, the emotions perceivable in these stories are mapped together with how these narratives reflect the thoughts of alternatives to reality. In research publications, the latter is called counterfactual thinking. The material was collected and analysed using a narrative research method. For this thesis, six former or present daycare workers were interviewed, each of them twice. The first interview was a narrative one, and the second one a semi-structured one. The actual material comprised 18 narratives, each one describing a particular situation where a mistake was made by the interviewee or his or her coworker. Narrative analysis was used to analyse various reporting styles, the emotional expressions used in them and the counterfactual thinking. Through reporting styles and counterfactual thinking it was possible to detect five different types of narratives the daycare workers used for reporting mistakes. These types of narratives were qualitatively different depending on whether the reported mistake was made by the person himself or herself or by a coworker. The types of narratives were judgmental, evasive, learning, polishing and what if reports.

Time has traditionally been a subject of studies in education theory from the point of view of a linear time. Interest to the social point of view of time has still increased recently also in the field of early childhood education research. Especially the new sociology of childhood has brought children's experiences and possibilities to influence into the center of attention in early childhood research. In this study I also tried to achieve the child's point of view. My aim was to investigate how a day in kindergarten (planned by adults) appears to child and in what way child experiences ones social time in kindergarten. My interest is in the quality of the child's experiences not in the time one spends on each activity during the day. The subject of this study is significant because there has not been a lot of research before of the subject but there are still some preconceptions. With this study it is possible to create new knowledge of the subject and possibly increase the level of children's participation and take into account children's point of view in an everyday life of kindergarten. This research is a case study, in which I investigated one 5-year-old in a typical Finnish kindergarten. I collected the data by observing child in her kindergarten group. I collected data of the events the child experienced during her day in kindergarten and I evaluated the level of her involvement during these events. In this research the child's experience of social time appeared as continuously interrupted and the level of involvement was generally low. Main conclusion is that a day in kindergarten is not meaningful experience for this child. Day appears to be filled by routines, boredom, waiting and interruptions. Nevertheless, it is also possible to produce meaningful experiences of social time through allowing children to act actively and to participate. Also the good quality of interaction between children and adults makes experiences of social time significant but it demands real enthusiasm from adults and new ways of acting in kindergarten groups.

Some previous findings suggest the effectiveness of physical activity (PA) on children's cognitive outcomes. Studying preschool PA enables to understand children’s considerable part of daily PA and to examine its relation to other skills specifically within preschool context. Early numeracy (EN) refers to young children’s mathematical proficiency, including relational and counting skills, as in understanding and operating with quantities, number relation, classification, and the concept of numbers. EN skills are shown to strongly predict later mathematical competence and academic achievements. Thus, it is important to study and support the development of children’s EN skills. However, previous research has mainly focused on school-age children, while research in early ages is scarce. No previous studies have used device-based measurement of PA with an individual test of EN to understand the associations between young children’s preschool PA and EN performance. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between PA during preschool hours and EN performance in children aged 4 to 5 years. More specifically, the following research questions are addressed: 1) How are PA intensity levels during preschool hours associated with EN performance in 4- to 5-year-old children? 2) What kind of profiles regarding PA intensity levels during preschool hours and EN performance can be identified among 4- to 5-year-old children? The sample consisted of children (N = 95, Mage = 4.6) attending preschools in Helsinki, Finland. PA was measured during 5 consecutive preschool days using hip-worn accelerometers, while EN performance was assessed using Van Luit and colleagues’ (2006) Finnish Early Numeracy Test. The data is analysed using quantitative research analysis. To answer the first research question, correlation matrix is performed to reveal relation between the variables of interest. For the second research question, latent profile analysis is used to identify children’s profiles according to their PA data and EN test scores, while the differences in profiles are compared using ANOVA. The results of the correlation analysis revealed no significant correlation between PA level during preschool hours and EN scores in children of ages 4 to 5 years. Latent profile analysis identified three profiles of children with high, medium, and low PA, whereas EN performance did not significantly differ among the profiles. In conclusion, while the results show significantly different amounts of PA among children during preschool, the main finding of the current study is in line with previous research, suggesting no direct relation between preschool PA and EN performance. Further research controlling for other factors that may influence the results is needed to examine how variation in PA level is related to EN performance in preschool.

The goal of this research is to explore the perceptions kindergarten teachers, working with children under the age of three, have on the execution of musical education within early childhood education and its significance on a child’s overall growth, development and learning. The research is limited to concerning only the opinions of kindergarten teachers, as for the teachers work as the groups pedagogical leaders and are responsible for the planning execution of high-quality early childhood education. Musical education is included as a part of other fine arts subjects and musical expression is a typical way of functioning and thinking for a child. Music has been proven to have an influence on the development of a childs’ personality and therefor it is necessary that various ways of musical expression are supported through musical education in early childhood education. The study has been carried out as a qualitative research, in which the material has been formed with an electronic questionnaire. The questionnaire was sent with an accompanying letter to 30 early childhood education centers in the city of Helsinki. The final sample consisted of the answers of 10 kindergarten teachers. The material was analyzed by using recurring themes and finding similarities and resemblances in the answers and studying the differences. According to the results, kindergarten teachers saw musical education as a significant support for the development of linguistics within children under the age of three. Musical education was also seen as creating the feeling of secureness for the child while basic needs were attended to like in toilet and clothing situations. Music was seen as a natural form of interaction with small children. Teachers experienced musical education in their training leading up to their job as a kindergarten teacher differently. The teachers saw for example their lack of skills in accompaniment and the scarce knowledge of musical theory as a challenge for accomplishing adequate musical education.