Browsing by Author "Vartiainen, Essi"

Objectives. The purpose of this research is to describe the understanding of multiculturalism of seven kindergarten teachers’ and to reflect their thoughts to the kindergarten’s early education plan. The research questions are: 1. What kind of thoughts do the kindergarten teachers have of multiculturalism? 2. How multiculturalism is shown in the kindergarten’s early childhood education plan? 3. What kind of connection is there between the kindergarten’s early childhood education plan and the teachers’ understanding of multiculturalism? Methods. The research is a qualitative study based on the interviews collected from kindergar-ten teachers and additional materials, such as pre-school curricula, the national and kindergar-ten’s own early childhood education plans and related theoretical literature. The data analysis method used was content analysis. Results and conclusions. The main result of the research suggests that the interviewed kinder-garten teachers understood multiculturalism in two different ways. The majority (5/7) of the kindergarten teachers associated multiculturalism with children of different linguistic back-grounds or immigrant children. The minority (2/7) of the teachers saw each individual as multi-cultural and multiculturalism as a broader phenomenon, which includes for example social class, ability, gender and sexual orientation in addition to ethnicity and language. In the kindergarten’s early childhood education plan, multiculturalism clearly refers to children with different linguistic backgrounds, as well as immigrant children. The teachers’ understand-ings of multiculturalism were partly incompatible with the early childhood education plan and they experienced it as somewhat limited. The biggest problem experienced by the kindergarten teachers was the use of the term 'multiculturalism' in the early childhood education plan with-out the definition of the concept. The research highlights the importance of definition of the concepts that are being used. The teachers experienced the research very rewarding and saw the importance of critical thinking in their role as a kindergarten teacher.