Browsing by Subject "pedagoginen sensitiivisyys"

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a novel pedagogical intervention (PedaSens) to increase adult emotional availability and to support adult–child interaction in toddler day care groups. The research questions are: 1) How did the emotional availability appear in adult-child interaction of the group? 2) How did the emotional availability of the adult-child interaction change in relation to the control group before and after the measurement? 3) What are the effects of adult educational background and children group size to the emotional availability of the adults and children? Most research on children's attachment and interactions has focused solely on dyadic parent-child contexts. However, according to interaction and neurobiology research there is accumulating evidence about the importance of sensitive interactions in multiple relationships on child's biological brain plasticity and stress response regulation. Previous research has demonstrated that a child seems to benefit from a number of day care-group relationships that are fostered in co-operation with other children and adults. Positive relationships are formed when the adults stay in interaction and respond sensitively to the needs of the child as well as to the whole group. A total of 45 kindergarten professionals and 15 public day care centers from southern Finland participated in the study. The total number of toddler groups was 17, with children 1–4 years of age. The data was collected by videotaping and observing the interaction between the adults and the children as part of the normal daily activities in the group. The first EA assessment between the intervention and control groups was conducted before the intervention and the second one six months after the beginning of the intervention. During the study period participants had five supervision sessions with the trainer. Non-parametric statistical analysis revealed a significant effect between the first and the second measurement on the adult interaction non-intrusiveness in the research group. This effect was not visible in the control group assessments which suggests that emotional availability of the intervention group seems to have increased during the EA intervention. In other ways, effects of the intervention were not significant in repeated measurements between intervention and control group (One-way ANOVA). Teacher's emotional availability in the dimension of non-hostility was significantly higher compared to other professional groups in the first measurement. These differences seemed to level off during the intervention and after the six month's study period differences between the professional groups were not significant. The study revealed the benefits of the pedagogical interventions to the development of early childhood education quality. It also enables critical conversation concerning the measurements used in pedagogical interventions.

The study examines teacher-child interaction in the early childhood classroom using improvisation as an analytic tool to locate pedagogical moments of spontaneous play and sustained shared thinking. The goal was to contribute to the understanding of the interactional mechanisms that occur when creativity is distributed throughout the group. Research of play interaction is fundamental in the context of early childhood education. More precise theoretical formulations of what happens during the play-based interaction between an adult and children are yet rare. One of the reasons is that play as a research phenomenon is complex and hard to operationalize in a systematic way. This study explains, by the means of in-depth case study findings, how the theoretical concept of improvisation can produce more careful descriptions about the early childhood teaching and the intricacies of teacher-child interaction in play based activity. Data for the narrative case study was collected through observations and video recordings of naturally occurring activities and encounters in a toddler play-based classroom. Data was enriched through video-elicited interviews (stimulated recall) of a single teacher. Research material was transcribed and analysed by the means of critical narrative analysis (CNA). Video recordings were also analysed through observing the involvement of the children (LIS-YC) and the engagement of the adult (AES). Focusing on early childhood education and play from the perspective of adult-child relational interaction, this research puts forward and presents evidence for two claims. First, in the context of early childhood education play should be understood as a professional skill of an adult and as a life-long qualitative dimension of interaction. Second, study findings suggests that improvisation, pedagogical sensitivity and introspective self reflection together could provide a new, more holistic interpretation to educational activities such as play in the viewpoint of adult's pedagogical practise. The results indicate that there is similarities between the logic of improvisation and the characteristics of pedagogical sensitivity. Study findings are consistent with theoretical perspectives that emphasize the active role of the adult in the development of the children's play competence.

This study examined teachers’ narratives of teacher sensitivity. The purpose was to find out what kind of situations requiring sensitivity teachers have encountered and what kind of sensitive ways of working teachers had. Situations and practices are highlighted to support student well-being, as previous research literature has shown that every act or omission of a teacher has an impact on the student. Pedagogical sensitivity is also seen as the heart of teaching. The study was based on narrative research. The data collection method was a semi-structured thematic interview. The study group was eight classroom teachers working in the area of Jyväskylä. The research data was analyzed through narrative methods. The division into analysis of narratives and narrative analysis served as a guideline in this study. Analysis of narratives was used to thematize and classify situations and practices that require sensitivity. The narrative analysis served as a tool when creating a new narrative of the data, the widest possible type of narrative on situations requiring the teachers’ sensitivity and the procedures they use in these situations. Teachers described a wide variety of situations that required sensitivity on the part of the teacher. Out-of-school issues were given more emphasis and included, most importantly, students’ personal matters and backgrounds, which were often subject to confidentiality or otherwise sensitive matters. The teacher had to be able to act sensitively when students behaved differently or experienced large and often negative emotions due to either conflicts between students or tangles in students’ personal lives. Issues related to schoolwork were primarily the emergence of students’ different skills in learning situations and the challenges they face in schoolwork. Listening and discussing things with the students was one of the most important sensitive ways of doing things. This provided background information about the situation, which allowed teachers to take the necessary action. Teachers had to able to stop at critical moments and change their own lesson plan to deal with the situation. Depending on the seriousness if the situation, parents or other authorities were contacted. The events of the student’s personal life had to be able to be taken into account as factors influencing the student’s activities and behavior. Situations that require sensitivity are often very sensitive by nature and a teacher’s sensitive activities require good student knowledge. A sensitive teacher is able to assess how to act in the best interests of the student in each situation.