Browsing by Author "Toppinen, Mari"

The aim of this study was to investigate kindergarten leaders' and kindergartenteachers' perceptions of group situations, successes and failures, as well as the cracks and the factors affecting them. The survey asks 1.) How subjects describe functional group situations? 2.) How they describe cracks in a group situations? 3.) How does the cracks in the interaction and group situations are reacted? 4.) What group situations, successes and failures are related to? The starting point for making the thesis were the thoughts associated with the concept of mentalization Fonagy (2009), Allen (2003, 2006) and Lyutenin (2009), Sajaniemi's and Mäkelä's (2013) ideas of group activities, and Fonsén's (2014) research related to the pedagogical management. Mentalisation is a prerequisite for the educator pedagogical sensitivity. Mentalisation is shown as a reflective activity, in which case the educator is able to describe the activities of another mental terms. (Larmo 2010) Pedagogically sensitive educator is able to meet a group of children and individual children's needs in a flexible way and to manage group situations for success. Mari Nislin (2016) reclaims in her study that pedagogical quality requires pedagogical sensitivity and also groupsensitivity. The other kindergarten team members, team culture and management together create a whole system, which will affect the quality of early childhood education. The data were collected in the autumn of 2014 and spring of 2015 by theme interviewing kindergarten leaders and kindergartenteachers. The research data analysis were applied phenomenographic approach. The material was processed with Atlas.ti program. This study found that kindergarten's leaders and kindergartenteachers description in group situations, successes and possible cracks and failures contributed to the same based on the material broken down into three categories significance of factors. These factors were the factors associated with the educator's mind and activities, operational culture of the team, and factors related to leadership. On the basis of the research material educators' ability to keep the group and its children in their own minds, helped the group situation became a success. In this case, the educator kept his group in control and was able to react flexibly to the surprising events in group situations. Successful group situation also required operating team member's ability to cooperate, to anticipate situations and good planning and commitment. Day care center director was seen to play an important role in the creation of these structures, together with the team employees.