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The early childhood years are pivotal as they mark the beginning of a young child’s life journey into education. This paper offers critical reflections of the early childhood care and education landscape in Singapore as it has evolved over the last decade. The discussion will draw on findings of the study Vital Voices for Vital Years 2 (2019) to explicate the issues, debates and challenges facing the early childhood care and education sector. It argues that recent developments in the sector with stepped increases in government funding and strategic policy development, augmented by the establishment of national agencies committed to improving the quality of care and education, have achieved significant milestones in the country. However, a more critical perspective of the role of early childhood in policy and practice to meet the diverse needs of young children and families is necessary for envisioning education as a pathway to inclusion and social equality, and for building a truly inclusive society.

In the new national core curriculum for Finnish preschool and basic education, rationales for supporting pupil participation are framed by the goal of developing school communities by listening to pupils’ perspectives, the social nature of teaching and learning and pupils’ participatory role in planning, implementing and evaluating their own learning. Also in educational literature, listening to pupils’ perspectives is seen as the first step of participation. Framed by these rationales, this article is based on a 6-week-long participatory learning project in one second-grade classroom in Finland. The research group of 8-year-olds included 11 girls and 10 boys. In this study, we used diamond ranking and peer interviews as mediating tools in listening to the pupils’ perspectives. In the article, we describe how a diamond ranking and a peer interview worked as a tool in capturing pupils’ perspectives. Two questions guided the research work: (1) How did diamond ranking and the peer interview work together as a method to improve teacher’s understanding from the pupils’ perspectives? and (2) How did diamond ranking and the peer interview work together as a method to promote pupils’ participation? In this study, the second graders were able to implement diamond ranking. This activity was used as a tool to stimulate pupils’ perspectives that were then captured in peer interviews. The methods provided important information about the pupils and helped the teacher to understand their perspectives. Diamond ranking and peer interviews also revealed information that was not related to pedagogical practices but indicated the sense of relatedness among pupils. In this study, the process of peer interviews was a child-led practice, while the process of diamond ranking activity was teacher-oriented. The method would have served pupils’ participation better if pupils had been more involved in the data collection.

In this study, we investigated how Finnish children used photographs and drawings to discuss their preschool day experiences in focus groups. Building on sociocultural perspectives on mediated action, we specifically focused on how these visual tools were used as mediational means in sharing experiences. The results of our embodied interaction analysis highlight the relevance of visual tools for the participants and the task at hand in the moment-to-moment, micro-level flow of interaction and its material environment. More specifically, our analysis illuminates different ways in which the visual tools were relevant for participating children and adults when sharing and talking about their experiences. In all, our study advances present-day understanding regarding how sociocultural and embodied interaction frameworks can guide visual research with children.

Drawing on the analytic concept of imaginary, this study investigates policy hybridisation in the Finnish early childhood education. Specifically, it illuminates how the interplay between different imaginaries enabled the neoliberal imaginary to oust the social-democratic imaginary through a tripartite process in a case of local productivity policy in the early childhood education sector. The confrontation of the historical trajectories and analyses of a localised hybridisation process suggests that even though historical trajectories play an important role in defining future policy solutions, hybridisations may have the power to transform their direction. We suggest that focusing on both discursive features of policy deliberation and material-technical ways of governing policy directions provide valuable information concerning policy reforms.

This article is based on a pedagogical action research initiative carried out in a Finnish primary school. Twenty-four 5th grade pupils and their teacher participated in the study. The research initiative was guided by two questions: (1) How do pupils experience their classroom practices? (2) How can pupils participate in the process of developing classroom practices through diamond ranking? Photographs, diamond ranking and written narratives functioned as mediating tools between the pupils’ experiences and the narratives of their classroom experiences. Drama lessons were the experiences that were most appreciated by the pupils. The pupils ranked experiential learning, learning games and group work activities as medium-level experiences in the learning projects. They ranked activities that were strictly structured, such as tasks from a book or notebook exercises, at the bottom of the diamond. In sum, the study reveals that diamond ranking, together with written narratives, worked well as a tool to capture the pupils’ experiences of classroom pedagogy. The activity gave each pupil the opportunity to participate in the process of gathering and analysing data, and to acquire agency in evaluating and developing classroom practices.

The present study is the first part of a longitudinal research project investigating whether children become more aware of phonemes or rhyming when they learn letters or letter sounds or even begin to read, and if so how. For the present paper, the phonological awareness of young children aged 2–6 years was analyzed, particularly their auditory knowledge of the phonemic structure of words as well as their knowledge of rhyme. Altogether, 110 children from Finnish day-care centres performed seven phonological tasks and a vocabulary size test. The results showed a clear age-dependent improvement in phonological awareness. Blending words of phonemes, separating rhyming words from each other and correcting words by substituting the wrong phoneme with the right one were found to be easier tasks for 2- to 5-year-old children than producing rhymes, twisting words or detecting an initial letter.

In this study we analyzed and described how students and teacher of one Finnish elementary class participated in and communicated through CSILE (Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environment) during the years 1997–1998. To this end, we examined the density of the interaction within class, students' participation rates, students' position in the CSILE mediated network of interaction, and the quality of their discourse. The data consisted of CSILE log files and students' written productions from the CSILE database. Social network analysis and qualitative content analysis were used to analyze the data. The findings showed that the density of interaction among participants was rather high, and all the students used CSILE to some extent. There were, however, substantial differences in the students' participation rates. The results also indicated that one student occupied a central position, and two students an isolated position in the CSILE mediated interaction. The study further revealed that the CSILE mediated discussion was composed of number of short discussion threads. The culture of CSILE mediated discourse and collaboration can be defined as follows; on topic, neutral, and providing information to others' comments or questions.

The relations and possible interaction of students' motivational orientation and the quality of their inquiry in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) were examined. The study was performed among ten-year-old students ( N = 26) in a Finnish elementary school. At the beginning of the learning project, the students were administered similar self-report questionnaires to identify their motivational tendencies. In order to compare the students' general motivational tendencies with their actual engagement, the lessons were videotaped for collecting data on the students' learning and social interaction processes during CSILE (Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environment) work. Furthermore, CSILE students' written work was analyzed to examine their practices of knowledge production and the epistemological nature of their inquiry. The study indicates that CSCL may facilitate the active participation of students who have a lot of difficulties in traditional school learning. In addition, regardless of their motivational orientation or school achievements, students tended to produce the same kind of descriptive, empirical, and factual knowledge. It seems that classroom culture and the nature of learning tasks significantly constrain each student's practices of inquiry. Longitudinal process-data is needed in order to analyze possible changes in students' motivational tendencies and knowledge- seeking inquiry.