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Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/p27455"

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  • Heikkilä, Paula (2018)
    This study has been started with my observation in the early childhood education where I have worked as a kindergarten teacher in a group of children aged 1-3 years. I have noticed often how different the toddlers are and how important it is for a toddler to be with other children. I have been amazed how good the toddlers are in their interaction even if they have smaller vocabulary than older children. The aim of the study is to explain and understand the interaction between toddlers in the context of the early childhood education. Additionally, the aim of the study is to find out how the temperament of toddlers is seen in the peer relationships. In this mixed methods case study, the source material consists of video and temperament material from ten toddlers. Parents evaluated the temperament of their toddler by using the Early Childhood Behaviour Questionnaire. The material is collected from two groups of children aged 1 to 4 who represent two municipal kindergartens in the metropolitan area. The research material has been collected as part of the Toddler Research in LASSO research project at the University of Helsinki. 33 separate interaction episodes were identified in the video material and classified according to different play modes. 23 episodes included play. The statistical IBM SPSS Statistics 24 was used for quantitative temperament analysis. Various variables describing different temperament characteristics were generated from the matrix obtained from the temperament questionnaires, calculated from the child-specific and mean matrix mean values. In the kindergarten the interaction between toddlers appeared mostly as playful interaction during the free activities of the day. In addition to the play, the peer interaction of toddlers emerged in those situations where a child watched other children's play from a site or where he/she was interacting with another child, by gaze and / or by speech. Toddlers made a lot of initiatives for the each other to start an interaction. The initiatives were for example touch, transition beside a friend and start to run. The temperament of the toddler was seen in the interaction between toddlers. The emergence of different temperaments in peer interaction shows that children's peer interaction is influenced by the temperament of the child alongside linguistic and cognitive factors. Early education teachers would benefit from the study of temperamental knowledge in order to distinguish the child's temperament from her cognitive ability.