Browsing by Author "Mustonen, Alli"

According to sociocultural learning theory a child develops and learns in social interaction with his or her learning environment. The social dimension of the learning environment in the early childhood education is related to child's need to become a member of the peer group. In group-based early childhood education this need shall be ensured as the group develops. Earlier research shows that social interaction of the learning environment either limits or promotes children's learning. The aim of this study is to find out if there is any correlation between group development and the quality of the learning environment in the early childhood education. In this study, the learning environment contains the physical, social and didactic dimensions. The theories behind this study are Tuckman's stages of group development (1965) and Koivula's research of children's sense of community and collaborative learning in day care center (2010). In this study, the quality factors of the learning environment were defined according to ECERS-R. The research questions were: Is there any correlation between group development stages and (1) the quality of the physical dimension, (2) the quality of the social dimension and (3) the quality of the didactic dimension of the learning environment in early childhood education? In this secondary research I used the quantitative data collected (spring 2015) by the Orientation project led by docent Jyrki Reunamo in the University of Helsinki. The material is extensive (n>2000). The children in this research were mostly in groups of 14 to 24 children. The difference between the age of the youngest and the oldest child in the group was between 0 to 5 years. The statistical methods of this research were the Cronbach's alpha, the partial correlation, the Spearman's correlation and the cross-tabulation. As expected, the group development correlates with physical, social and didactic dimension of the learning environment in early childhood education. E.g. basic care situations were more peaceful, social interaction was more effective, children's linguistic participation was richer and play was longer-lasting in later group development stages than earlier stages of the group development. The structure of the group shall be taken in to account.