Browsing by Author "Korhonen, Noora"

The purpose of this research was to investigate child´s prosocial behavior´s reinforcement and prevention of bullying in Montessori and Reggio Emilia kindergarten. The aim of this study was the preschool children and their early childhood education teachers. The research questions are: 1) How early childhood education teacher reinforce child´s prosocial behavior? 2) Which kind of pedagogical avenues are related to prosocial behavior? 3) How early childhood education teacher prevent bullying? 4) Which kind of pedagogical avenues are related to prevention of bullying? Two kinds of data were collected for the study: a survey (quantitative data) of early childhood education teacher and video (qualitative data) was collected by videotaping and observing the interaction between the adults and the children as part of the normal daily activities in the group. A total of six kindergarten professionals and six kindergartens participated in the study. Two of the kindergarten was municipal, two of them were Montessori-, and two of them were Reggio Emilia kindergarten. Videotaping was made by interaction analysis and a survey was made by theory guiding content analysis. By means of videotaping was measured child´s social status in the group. By means of survey was measured the phenomenon of bullying and the roles of bullying in the preschool environment, what kind of pedagogical practices used in preschools were related to bullying behavior and the prevention of bullying. The results of this research indicate that bullying appear in three kindergarten participated in the study. The most common way how early childhood education teacher reinforce child´s prosocial behavior was to be sensitive toward child´s initiatives. Teachers encourage children to emotion skills, show kindness and sympathy. Teachers see child like actor in kindergarten. The most common pedagogical avenues to relate a prosocial behavior was to teach child to understand other´s point of view. Early childhood education teacher prevent bullying by keeping a positive atmosphere and they leave time to education conservations. Teachers make children feel safe in kindergarten and they attend to child´s individual needs. The most common pedagogical avenues to prevent bullying was to apologize if child was bully other child. Teachers use pedagogical avenues to prevent bullying with children to practice others feelings.