Browsing by Subject "Compassionate Acts"

Compassion in early childhood education settings is a phenomenon that hasn´t been researched a lot despite its appearance in everyday interactions in early childhood education. In this study I examined how the acts of compassion were constituted in a Finnish 2-5-year olds kindergarten class. I conducted this research by using an observation method resembling ethnography and analysing the data using Grounded Theory -method. I answer to three research questions which were: 1) How the need for compassion is noticed in kindergarten? 2) What kind of characteristics can be found on situations where there are compassionate acts in kindergarten? and 3) What kind of compassionate acts are done in a kindergarten setting? This survey was conducted in one Finnish metropolitan area kindergarten class where there were 27 children, aged 2¬–5, two early childhood education teachers, two nurses and one nursing student doing her practical training. The research material consisted of observation notes of situations where there was suffering or compassionate acts during 10 days of observation. In this research construction of compassion included different ways of noticing the need for compassion, situational factors and assessments and acts of compassion. The child´s need for compassion could be noticed by the child’s emotional reactions, the way the child acted, hearing about the need for compassion or anticipating a situation likely to cause the need for compassion. In this kindergarten class the acts of compassion consisted of the acts of comforting, helping, influencing the person or matter that produced the need for compassion, flexibility, including, sharing and humour. Compassionate acts were not automatic. There were situational elements and assessments that could have had an effect on whether compassionate acts were conducted. Conduction of compassionate acts seemed to be influenced by who noticed the suffering, in what kind of situation suffering was noticed and what kind of assessments were made in the situation. This research is a qualitative research and it has limitations to its generalization, but it can shed a light to the phenomenon of compassion and construction of compassion in early childhood education settings.