Browsing by Author "Luukkonen, Elli"

This study describes the pre-school education and its main tasks on the basis of the binding documents and literature. The aim is to determine kindergarten teacher’s views on which goals they find most important in pre-school education. In addition, the objective is to review methods and procedures by which kindergarten teachers strive to achieve the key objectives mentioned. Pre-school education is governed by Basic Education Act (628/998) and the Government Decree (422/2012). Based on these National Board of Education regulations draws up the national core curriculum in pre-school education, which controls the composing of the local curriculum. New criteria for the national pre-school curriculum was published in 2014, and it came to introduce 01.08.2016. The study is a qualitative case study. The study involved three Helsinki based kindergarten teachers. The interviewees were working in the same area of ​​early childhood education, but in different day care units. The data were obtained from group-based theme interviews in the spring of 2016 the same time as when the new pre-school curriculum was introduced. The method of analysis used in this study is theory based content analysis. According to this study the main objectives of pre-school education are related to the child's socio-emotional and cognitive competence. The results were crystallized into three categories: Personal development of the child and the perception of oneself as a learner, Development of the child's learning capacity and Child as an independent individual agent in a peer group. These results highlighted the general objectives and extensive know-how as mentioned in the curriculum. Instead the learning modules got less attention. The kindergarten teachers interviewed for this study seeked to achieve the objectives of the curruculum by creating an operating culture that supports growth and learning. Such a culture is based on a good learning environment, a child-sensitive pedagogy, teacher's pedagogical thinking and action, as well as integrative education and phenomenon-based learning.