Browsing by Author "Kuuluvainen, Heljä"

The Kindergarten is a multiprofessional work community in which early childhood education is provided by teams. The personnel have varying education backgrounds and professional titles. According to previous research team work requires mutual goals and courses of action between the team members in order to function properly. High-quality education can be delivered only by cooperative teams, in which members agree on mutual ways of carrying out their work and have established ground rules. Multi-professionalism, or shared expertise is necessary for efficient team work. Other important elements for team members’ well-being at work are regular feedback, continuous evaluation and opportunities to develop at work. This research concentrates on a written contract called “tiimisopimus” (team contract) used in a Southern Finnish city. The main goal of the research was to clarify whether interaction and well-being at work is included in the team contract, as well as to discover how useful the personnel of the city considered the team contract to be. The personnel’s opinions about the team contract were collected by an online survey. The data were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative content analysis. Responses were given by 34 participants from eleven kindergartens. The study showed that approximately two thirds of the questions in the team contract handled at least some aspect of interaction and well-being at work. Most of the people who answered to the online survey felt that the team contract was “useful” or “somewhat useful” and felt that it had improved the interaction at their workplace as well as improved their well-being at work. The opinions between kindergarten teachers and childcare nurses did not differ to any significant degree.