Browsing by Author "Häggman, Emilia"

The purpose of this study is to find out the preschool aged children’s conceptions about becoming a schoolchild and the construction of these conceptions. This information could be utilized in the planning the beginning of school. The theoretical part of the study discusses preschool and elementary education and their curricula. The focus in this part is to concentrate on the history of pre-primary education and to compare the differences between preschool and elementary education. Additionally, this part focuses on transition from preschool to elementary education. This change is viewed through Bronfenbrenner (1979) ecological transition. The ecological transition process has been a typical approach in the Finnish analysis of transitions. Finally, the theoretical part discusses the preschool aged children’s learning process and what kind of thoughts have a significant effect in the forming of their conceptions. This is a qualitative research with ethnographic features. The ethnographic features derive from the fact that the scholar spent four weeks in a children’s preschool group as an intern. The method for the gathering of data was half-structured theme based interview. The data was collected in December 2017. The sample group consisted of preschool aged children from city of Helsinki. Total of 15 children were interviewed for this study. The analysis was made with the method of content analysis. The results were divided into two parts based on the research problem. The results showed that the children have a lot of preconceptions about school. The preconceptions were divided into three main categories: conceptions of being a schoolchild, conception of school as an environment, and conceptions of the contents of schooldays. The second part of the results discussed how the children’s preconceptions are being formed. The conceptions of being a schoolchild were influenced during the preschool year by parents, siblings, the friends of children who were already attending school, adults working in preschool education, and visits to the school.