Browsing by Author "La Serna Kanevets, Liudmila"

The study examines sensitivity in the everyday interactive situations with multicultural children under 3 years of age in early childhood educational context. The research problem focuses on figuring out in which ways sensitivity occurs and what are the contextual factors related to sensitive and non-sensitive situations. Sensitivity refers to early childhood educator’s ability to detect and take into account the emotional needs of the child (Laevers according to Kalliala, 2008). The study was conducted in collaboration with the University of Helsinki LASSO project and a kindergarten in Helsinki, where the research material was collected by videorecording three early childhood educators and two children in their everyday life at the kindergarten. The research material was colleted between the late autumn 2014 to early spring 2015. The qualitative data were analysed by utilizing theory-driven approach. The basis of the analysis is in AES (adult engagement scale) and especially the sensitivity part of the scale, as well as EA (emotional availability) scale. LIS-YC scale was also used in observation of children (Kalliala, 2008). The results showed that sensitivity is a small part of everyday interactive situations. Differences in results were seen in the quality of the interaction. The majority of the interaction with the first participant was neutral, and more than half of the interactions were sensitive. In contrast, only half of the other participant’s interaction was neutral, and also half was non-sensitive. The differences were also found in the ways in which the sensitive and non-sensitive situations appeared in the participants' everyday life. For the first participant, the sensitivity was constructive, and adults made huge efforts to interact with the child. The insensitive moments were not numerous, but they could not be classified as accidental. The second one’s sensitive moments were supportive in nature but relatively rare. Insensitive situations were somewhat accidental, and for some reason, educators failed to notice the child’s needs. Based on the results, a study related to sensitivity between educators and children comparing Finnish and multicultural children would be important to conduct.