Browsing by Author "Perälampi, Petra"

Children's programs on television are still an essential part of the preschool aged children’s life. Despite this, their visibility and impact of the kindergarten everyday life hasn’t been studied very much. The goal of this study was to find out what kind of opinions the kinder-garten’s educational staff and the preschool aged children have about watching children’s programs from television. Especially, the study was interested in what kind of children’s programs the preschool aged children are watching and also how well the educational staff of the group knows what the children of their group are watching. The second research problem examined the way how the kindergarten’s educational staff used their own knowledge about the children’s programs in the kindergarten’s everyday life. The study also explained how the educational staff’s and the preschool aged children’s responses confront. The study material was collected from two kindergarten preschool groups in the cities of Helsinki and Espoo. One group from both of the kindergarten participated in this study. Children’s responses were collected by theme interviews from overall 11 preschool aged children. The groups educational staff’s responses were collected by open questionnaire. Altogether 7 educators responded to the questionnaire. The responses were analyzed using content analysis. The results showed that the educational staff of the preschool group barely knew any chil-dren’s programs which were shown in television. The most of the educators couldn’t name the most watched children’s programs of their group. It was significant that the educational staff felt that it’s important that they know what kind of children’s programs children are watching. Despite this they hardly exploited their knowledge when they worked with children. Children’s own opinion is that they didn’t discuss about children’s programs with the kindergarten’s educational staff. They also say that they think that the educational staff didn’t know what kind of children’s programs children are watching. The educational staff’s own responses about the most watched children’s programs didn’t confront either with children’s responses. It can be said that children’s programs aren’t really visible in the kindergarten’s everyday life, despite the fact that they are popular among children.