Browsing by Author "Lyytikäinen, Lotta"

Previous research emphasize the significance of reading to children for their development and learning. The National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care and the National Core Curriculum for Pre-Primary Education also set pedagogic objectives and align content of education that can be achieved by reading. It is interesting, how kindergarten teachers implement these objectives and educational content in their every-day work and recognize the aspects of the significance of reading to children presented in research. Kindergarten teachers’ opinions were studied by a questionnaire that was distributed in a Facebook group of kindergarten teachers. In all, 25 replies were given, of which 18 replies of kindergarten teachers with qualification were analysed using content analysis. The kindergarten teachers who participated in this study were aware of the alignments of the National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care and the National Core Curriculum for Pre-primary Education concerning reading to children and they recognised largely the significance of reading and its impacts to children. However, the kindergarten teachers’ opinions of the objectives and impacts of reading to children varied. Most commonly, the kindergarten teachers read to children during educational or resting moments. They used divers and versatile texts, but there were different ways to address the texts before and after the reading session. Surprisingly, 14 respondents told that there was enough time for reading to children in kindergarten. Although the use of time, lack of staff and unsuitable spaces in kindergarten were mentioned as hindrances to reading. It would be useful to better utilize research results of the significance of reading to children in early childhood education for kindergarten teachers to have more coherent views of the significance of reading to children and of realisation of reading in a more systematic way. According to this study mainly the subjective opinions of a kindergarten teacher decide which objectives are being set and which impacts wanted and how the actual reading is realised.