Browsing by Subject "1–3-vuotiaat"

The aim of the study was to research the manifestation of compassion in the peer interaction situations of toddlers in day care center and the impact of adult involvement on the expression of children's compassion. The research is part of a research project on Constituting Cultures of Compassion in Early Childhood Education (CoCuCo). Compassion research has not been done earlier by observing children's interaction in a natural environment. This study will provide the elements for developing early childhood education environments and interaction situations for toddlers in a day care center in order to strengthen the compassionate culture. Interest in the meaning of compassion for social change has increased. The meaning and power of compassion has been studied from many perspective of sciences. In this qualitative video research the research material was the video material compiled by the CoCuCo-research team on the different interaction and action situations of children aged 1–3 years in one day care center in the metropolitan area in Finland. The research methods were the observation and analysis of the video material. In the analysis of the data, I shared the compassion situations I found with the episodes in two main categories: 1. expression of compassion in children's interaction situations and 2. the effect of adult involvement on the expression of children's compassion. After this, I analyzed the various manifestations of compassion and the various effects of adult involvement that I found within the episodes. This study showed that there were compassionate acts of interaction between toddlers in terms of comforting, sharing, helping, and anticipating. Most often, the acts of children's com-passion were appeared as physical and verbal comforting or through objects and functional sharing. Adults contributed to their day care with their involvement, mostly to promote com-passion, but sometimes to undermine compassion. The results of this study support the view that young children have a natural way of working with compassion. The influence of adults on the development of a compassionate culture is very important. Adults need to realize the importance of the moments leading to compassion and give children time enough and compassionate guides.