Browsing by Author "Ojamaa, Ilona"

The purpose of this study was to investigate early childhood education teacher students’ perceptions about the child's self-esteem and the perceptions of the support for self-esteem. Self-esteem is a very little researched topic in Finland and early childhood education teacher students’ perceptions of it have not been studied at all. These were the most important reasons for this study. The research method consisted of interviews with five early childhood education teacher students. The study was a phenomenographic study since it aims to depict conceptions of a particular phenomenon, that is, in this study, the perceptions of the child's self-esteem by early childhood education students. The interviews were conducted in January 2020. The research showed that early childhood education students seem to have a diverse and comprehensive understanding of the child's self-esteem and ways to support it. The results showed that early childhood education teacher students think that supporting self-esteem is facilitated by the knowledge about self-esteem, so it is appropriate to consider whether there is more need for studies about self-esteem in the early childhood education university program.