Browsing by Author "Suominen, Annika"

In my thesis I examined multiculturalism and how it is manifested in the work of kindergarten teachers and classroom teachers. My research questions are, firstly, how the teachers speak about multiculturalism when describing their work, and, secondly, how they describe their co-operation with multicultural families. As the surrounding society becomes increasingly multicultural, kindergartens and schools do the same. This requires teachers to be proficient in multicultural education, which puts their multicultural competence in an important role. Furthermore, multicultural education involves all children, not merely minorities. If there are structures that fail to support the multicultural kindergarten and school environment, and thereby equality on a more general level, changes should be made. For this thesis, I interviewed three kindergarten teachers and four classroom teachers. The method chosen was a narrative interview, in which the interviewees are asked to describe their experiences in a narrative form. In the narrative analysis I examine what has happened, who participated in the events, and what the speaker’s role was. The teachers experienced multiculturalism as such an integral part of their daily work that to separate it from other activities was occasionally challenging. Mainly, multiculturalism presented itself as a positive phenomenon. However, sometimes it created challenges. Respecting the child’s own cultural background was not always possible, or the teacher did not have enough knowledge of the different cultures or the families. The teachers felt it was important to listen to the child who tells about his or her culture. The problems involving language learning created the need for individualized instruction and thus added to the teachers’ workload. If the parents’ Finnish skills were poor or lacking, the amount of co-operation with them ended up decreasing. Otherwise co-operation between the schools and the families was often described positively, although building trust might have required more interaction than it would have if the family had been Finnish. Enough support and correct resources should be paramount when multicultural education is involved.