Browsing by Author "Tiitta, Viivi"

Objectives. The objective of this research is to investigate teachers’ perceptions of bullying among children in early childhood education. In addition, the research deals with teachers’ ability to identify bullying among children and their ability to intervene of that. The research is important because bullying has a serious influence on growth, development and learning of whole group of children. The previous researches have proven that bullying among children is already occurring in child groups of early childhood education. In addition, the previous researches show that teachers’ ability to identify bullying among children and intervene of that contains variability. Methods. The research was produced using qualitative research methods. At the beginning of the research I defined key definitions. I examine bullying and its occurrence in early childhood education in the theoretical framework. In addition, I deal with guidance documents related to early childhood education such as the Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care and the Act on Early Childhood Education and Care. For the research, I interviewed three teachers of early childhood education who work in day care centers in the city of Helsinki. Their work experience varied from one year to twenty years. The individual interviews were theme interviews which organized in December 2018 and January 2019. The material was analyzed utilizing a content analysis. Results and conclusions. According to this research, bullying among children was already visible in child groups of early childhood education. The teachers, whom I interviewed, had identified bullying for the most part as physical and direct bullying. The most of bullying appeared when children were playing freely. The ability of early childhood education teachers to identify and intervene bullying was varied. In addition, the day care centers have been lacking common written plans for identifying and intervening regarding bullying. The challenges to identify and intervene of bullying were caused by staff’s absences and busy schedule in the day care centers. According to the research, the teachers need written plans to identify and intervene bullying in day care centers. In addition, they wished to receive assistance and in-service training related to ways of intervening bullying. The results of this research are consistent with the results of previous researches regarding bullying.