Browsing by Subject "kulturell hållbarhet"

This master’s thesis was written in association with University of Helsinki’s SATSA-project (Social and cultural sustainability in ECEC) and explores how directors of early childhood education understand sustainability and what responsibility they address themselves in maintaining socially and culturally sustainable organization cultures in their respective kindergartens. Sustainability issues are highly significant within today’s society and the policy for ECEC also emphasizes sustainability to a high degree (Utbildningsstyrelsen, 2022). It appears that the role of directors of ECEC has not been examined to any larger extent from a sustainability perspective in previous research. The objective of this study is to develop a deeper understanding for organization cultures and leadership in ECEC and the relationship between them from a sustainability perspective. Based on this objective the following research questions were formulated: 1. How do directors of early childhood education describe a sustainable organization culture? 2. What responsibility do directors of early childhood education address themselves in maintaining socially and culturally sustainable organization cultures? To answer these research questions the study was carried through with a qualitative method and phenomenography as the research approach. The data consists of seven recorded and transcribed interviews with directors of ECEC. These half-structured interviews were carried out remotely with directors from several kindergartens around Svenskfinland. The data was analysed with a phenomenographic analysis process inspired by Dahlgren and Johnsson (2019). The results of the study showed that directors of ECEC described sustainable organization cultures by focusing on cultural and social aspects such as structures, agreements, diversity, connection, open communication, and well-being. They pointed out economic and ecological aspects of sustainability to a lesser extent. The result also showed wide descriptions of areas of responsibility. The directors saw themselves having an important role in maintaining socially and culturally sustainable organizations cultures by taking care both of their own and their staff’s well-being and by maintaining structures in their respective kindergartens. They saw presence, availability, cooperation with the staff and a responsibility of the big picture as their significant roles in maintaining the organization cultures. To be able to understand the broad role of directors of ECEC in their work, it needs to be looked at from a sustainability perspective. Furthermore, the implementation of sustainability in organization cultures could be clarified for example with the help of educating the directors. This way the directors could form a unified vision on what sustainability could implicate in an early childhood education context from a leadership perspective.