Browsing by Subject "Förskollärare"

The purpose of this study is to search for people´s describing thoughts and furthermore positive and negative attitudes to the value and status of preschool teachers in the Finnish society, to explain a possible disharmony between these two. The theoretical frame of this study clarifies the concept of professionalism and its meaning in relation to the occupation of preschool teacher. It furthermore clarifies the concept of attitudes and its components, its origin and its ability to change. Furthermore, this study is a qualitative study and its approach is phenomenological, based on semi-structured interviews. Four people, regardless of earlier experience of children, are interviewed in Helsinki with the aim to seize the phenomenon, their positive, negative or indifferent attitudes towards preschool teachers in respect of their value verses their status in the Finnish society. Finally the result shows that positive, affective attitudes seem to be connected with children and positive, cognitive attitudes tend to be connected with their childhood witch creates a link to why preschool teachers has such high value in the society. According to this study, lack of knowledge and stereotypic point of views, lowers their status and therefor a disharmony is created between the preschool teacher´s value and status. Furthermore, in order to make a change, knowledge and visibility of the meaning of the profession as a preschool teacher within young children’s education is needed in purpose to bring their value and status to the same level.