Search

In 1996 Koschmann (1996) suggested computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) as an emerging paradigm of educational technology. After six years, how has the field developed? What does research say about CSCL to date? What is the state of the art? The aim of the present paper is to explore the foundations for CSCL, and in doing so, to contribute to the theoretical as well as empirical understanding and development of CSCL research.

Varhaiskasvatuksen aloitus on monelle pienelle lapselle elämän ensimmäinen vanhemmasta tai huoltajasta eroamisen kokemus, johon liittyy intensiteetiltään voimakkaita tunneilmauksia kuten itkemistä. Aikaisemmissa tutkimuksissa erotilanteisiin liittyvää itkemistä on tarkasteltu lähinnä psykologisena eroahdistuksen tunteena, eikä itkevän lapsen kohtaamisen rakentumiseen vuorovaikutuksessa ole kiinnitetty huomiota. Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkastelemme erotilanteita mikrovuorovaikutuksen näkökulmasta soveltaen keskustelunanalyysin menetelmää. Kysymme, miten aikuinen kohtaa itkevän lapsen erotilanteessa, kun vanhempi on juuri poistunut. Tutkimuksemme osoittaa, että itkevän lapsen kohtaaminen rakentuu erotilanteissa moninaisin kielellisin ja kehollisin keinoin. Tunnistimme kaksi erilaista, vuorovaikutuksessa kerroksellisesti ja vuorottain rakentuvaa kohtaamisen käytäntöä, 1) lapsen huomion suuntaaminen pois itkemisestä ja 2) lapsen huomion suuntaaminen itkemiseen. Molemmilla käytännöillä oli lapsen itkua tyynnyttävä vaikutus. Tutkimuksemme syventää ymmärrystä itkevän lapsen kohtaamisesta erotilanteissa ja vastaa varhaiskasvatuksen aloituksen käytäntöjen kehittämistarpeisii

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.

This article investigates children's everyday manifestations of grief and grieving situations. Medical and psychological approaches to grief and grieving usually focus on the death of loved ones. It is argued that everyday grief and grieving in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is present in social situations where loneliness and withdrawal are experienced by children. A cultural-historical approach was used to examine everyday grief and grieving in the preschool setting. Video observations were made of Mayra, a 5-year-old girl living in a rural Mexican community. The findings show that grief and grieving are affected by children's social situations, the material conditions of the location and the adult's role in compassionate approach in alleviating grief. Implications from this study highlight the need to examine everyday situations where children experience loneliness and withdrawal when relating to peers as a part of children's larger frame of grief.

Teacher learning is crucial in terms of good quality education in early years and, respectively teachers’ professional communities are crucial for teacher learning. The meaning of engagement in collaborative learning and resources available in professional community are emphasized in educational reforms. In this study, we explored teachers’ perceptions of the resources for learning within their professional community in terms of knowledge sharing, the professional recognition received and a constructive work climate in the beginning of national curriculum reform. Individual variation in these factors was explored using latent profile analysis with a sample of 272 pre-primary and early primary school teachers. Moreover, association with the experience of burnout symptoms was examined. Three distinct profiles were identified: High fit; High recognition; Moderate knowledge sharing and fit. The results showed that teachers in the High fit profile experienced less cynicism towards the professional community. The study sheds light on the role of the recognition received from co-workers and a constructive and enabling work climate for the increased capacity to construct shared knowledge in the context of curriculum reform, and for buffering experienced cynicism. publishedVersion

Current research has addressed children’s involvement in codesign from several different perspectives such as empowerment, design thinking, participation, and learning. The literature presents many roles that children can have in participatory design (PD) e.g. as testers, informants, users, co-designers, and co-researchers. Both critical views and solutions to support children’s genuine participation exist. The investigation was motivated by examining whether and how children’s participation can be enhanced through PD practices. The study conducted a participatory design (PD) process in a kindergarten in Finland together with adults and children. The Grounded Theory analysis elicited different roles of the participants as prominent indicators of the interaction in and quality of participatory process. These roles were further elaborated as Zones of participation (ZoP) that constituted of the Zone of audience, Zone of whisperer, Zone of actor and Zone of director. The analysis shows that there are significant co-occurrences between participant groups accessing different zones. We suggest that the quality of participation in the design process can be investigated by identifying participants’ access to different ZoP. Movement between the zones indicates that there is no one-sided control over actions and dialogue between the participants is prominent.

This study explores how one and two year old peers (henceforth toddlers) participate in joint play activities in a natural group-care setting. We focus on joint play activity between three toddler peers during one full day-care day in a Finnish toddler classroom. Questions guiding the analysis concern the sequential understanding of how play emerges within peer interaction and how toddler peers are able to build sustained co-participation in their joint play during the day. The analysis showed that joint play was fragmented and organized in short segments of dyadic or triadic interaction. Re-establishments of joint play and accumulation of significant play signals during the day were important practices for toddlers to constitute social organization and sustained co-participation in their multi-party peer play. The results strengthen our understanding of very young children as both more and less competent play companions in their peer groups and guide adults’ practice in relation to peer play in toddler classrooms.

A large body of educational research has focused on play as one of children's own activities, however, considerably less attention has been paid to structures and practices associated with joint play between adults and children. This article contributes to this line of research by analyzing adults' participation in joint play with very young children. The data consist of 10 rich make-believe play cases taken from 150 h of videotaped, naturally occurring interactions in a group care setting. The results show that the ability of adults to build sustained co-participation in play with very young children demands delicately timed observations, initiatives and responses with attuned and coordinated use of gesture, gaze and talk. In all, this study provides one way to study and understand better what adults are doing in practice while they are actively co-participating in play. Pedagogical implications for early childhood education are discussed.

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 paper, we introduce a conceptual framework for researching the dynamics of imagination in science classroom interactions. While educational interest in imagination has recently increased, prior research has not adequately accounted for how imagination is realized in and through classroom interactions, nor has it created a framework for its empirical investigation. Drawing on a theory of imagination situated in cultural psychology (Zittoun et al., 2013; Zittoun & Gillespie, 2016), we propose such a framework. We illustrate our framework with a telling case (Mitchell, 1984) of imagination from a Finnish primary science classroom community. Our illustration focuses on the dynamics of imagination as it unfolds in classroom interactions and how qualitatively distinct loops of imagination are formed. In specific, we show how the students’ meaning making expands in time and space and can become more refined and differentiated through loops of imagination and their dynamics. In all, our paper argues that imagination is a constitutive element of science learning. Our proposed conceptual framework provides potential avenues for further empirical research on the dynamics of imagination in science learning and teaching.

Peers have a significant impact on children’s learning and development (e.g., Rubin, Bukowski & Bowker, 2015; Sawyer, 2015; Corsaro & Eder, 1990). Interactions with other same age children not only influence children’s social, cognitive and emotional competencies, but importantly constitute the very grounds for their development. Previous research has shown that peers have a critical role in children’s language learning, cognitive skills, physical wellbeing as well as in socio-cognitive areas of development, like collaboration, cooperation and pro-sociality. While this body of work has significantly advanced our understanding of the nature of peer interactions, there is still a dearth of knowledge on how children orient to and address the worries, concerns or suffering of their peers in everyday settings, namely, to act with compassion. To this end, in this chapter we will present our cultures of compassion approach (Lipponen, Rajala, & Hilppö, 2018) to studying compassion in children’s peer interactions in a Finnish kindergarten and share an example of our video ethnographic work and interaction analysis on compassion. We will conclude our chapter by discussing how it is possible to foster compassionate peer cultures in early child education and care settings. eers have a significant impact on children’s learning and development (e.g., Rubin, Bukowski & Bowker, 2015; Sawyer, 2015; Corsaro & Eder, 1990). Interactions with other same-age children not only influence children’s social, cognitive and emotional competencies, but importantly constitute the very grounds for their development. Previous research has shown that peers have a critical role in children’s language learning, cognitive skills, physical wellbeing as well as in socio-cognitive areas of development, like collaboration, cooperation and pro-sociality. While this body of work has significantly advanced our understanding of the nature of peer interactions, there is still a dearth of knowledge on how children orient to and address the worries, concerns or sufferings of their peers in everyday settings, namely, to act with compassion. To this end, in this chapter we will present our cultures of compassion approach (Lipponen et al., 2018) to studying compassion in children’s peer interactions in a Finnish kindergarten and share an example of our video ethnographic work and interaction analysis on compassion. We will conclude our chapter by discussing how it is possible to foster compassionate peer cultures in early child education and care settings.

This chapter applies Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) in order to explore the complexities of pedagogical leadership within Singapore’s commercialised early childhood education and care ECEC environment, an environment which in Singapore’s early childhood care and education sector is in its nascent phases of development as it moves towards becoming a knowledge-based profession. The authors present findings from a study of principals and directors of early childhood settings who consider ways in which pedagogical leadership could be enacted within a marketised educational system. The study reveals that pedagogical concerns should be central to an educational leader’s work, but oftentimes, leaders are pulled in many different directions towards managerial and administrative tasks. There appears to be a struggle between two conflicting motives: engaging in pedagogical work and/or performing administrative tasks.

In this paper, we consider pedagogical quality particularly as equal opportunities for participating in decision-making in preschool. Relying on Ferraris' [2013. Documentality: Why it is necessary to leave traces. New York: Fordham University Press] theory of Documentality, we demonstrate how pedagogical documentation can contribute to understanding children's perspectives and discuss how it may help facilitate children's perspectives to become part of their everyday lives at preschool. In addition, we examine, using a multi method approach, how our conceptualizations help critically examine equality in early childhood education (ECE). The study was conducted in Finnish preschools. The data source for this study is composed of the researcher's observation diary, self-documentation conducted by teachers (n = 13), individual ECE plans of 104 2 to 7-year-old children and document-aided interviews with their teachers (n = 13). Finally, we critically discuss the consequences of our findings in terms of documentation, pedagogy and the equality of ECE.

This paper discusses a socio-culturally informed study on children's sense of agency regarding their everyday lives. The empirical data comprise of open-ended interview situations where four elementary school children (age 9–10) reflect on their everyday life with the help of photographs they had themselves taken. The results highlight variation in the children's accounts of their sense of agency. In all, the results provide a nuanced understanding of how the children's own aspirations, beliefs, and competencies, from their perspective, were related to engagement in different practices in their everyday life.

This study investigated the contradiction between student agency and teacher control in classroom interactions during dialogic teaching. The study focused on interactional moments when the students opposed or questioned the instructional activity, because it was hypothesized that the agency-control contradiction (Rainio, 2008) becomes particularly evident in these moments. The video data were collected in a heterogeneous Finnish third-grade classroom and analyzed with interaction analysis. The results show how promoting student agency is a contradictory endeavor that requires balancing between the aspirations of dialogic teaching and institutional demands. The results showed that the students' criticism and questioning of instructional activity were targeted at the contents, procedures, and purpose of the instructional activity. We found inconsistency in the teacher's responses to the students' opposition according to the type of opposition. Providing space for negotiation created opportunities for achieving student agency. Conversely, the teacher also silenced students' opposition by enforcing his institutional authority or disregarding student opposition, resulting in interactions that suppressed student agency. This study adds to the understanding of what is at stake when students' agency is promoted in classroom interactions.

This socioculturally informed study investigated children’s sense of agency in relation to their everyday life in preschool. The empirical data comprised focus groups reflection situations wherein Finnish preschool children (n. 19, aged 6–7) reflected on their everyday life with the help of photographs and drawings they made. Building on a situative and discursive take on the sense of agency, the results of this study highlight the different forms of the sense of agency talked into being in the focus groups. The results also provide evidence of the different activities within which children’s sense of agency was embedded. In addition, the study also engages with the notion of radical passivity to theoretically explore the borders of the concept of the sense of agency. In all, the study demonstrates the mundane side of children’s sense of agency and its subtle dynamics in day-to-day life in preschool.

This study, conducted in Finnish private and Montessori child care centres, aimed at investigating the development of the phonological awareness (PA) of two- to five-year-old preschool children within a six-month period in relation to emerging letter knowledge and reading skills. The children (N = 72) performed five phonological tasks and a vocabulary test, a letter knowledge test and a reading skills test twice; in the beginning, when knowing no letters, and at the end of the study. The results show that the children's performance in the different phonological tasks improved over a six-month period. Detecting word structure or blending phonemes were easier than producing rhymes or twisting. The children who had learned to recognize letters performed better in phonological tasks than the children who had not learned any letters, but children able to read precociously exceeded all. Our results appear to indicate that learning letters does not require previous PA ability but affects PA.

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.

The purpose of this single case study was to investigate emotional and playful stance taking in adults and very young children as they engage in joint make-believe play activity in a natural Finnish group-care setting. Drawing on the sequential approach of conversation analysis (CA), the study represents an effort to understand play in an early childhood education (ECE) setting from both children's and adults' perspectives at the same time. The results suggest that the interplay of emotional and playful stance taking in make-believe play produces emotional transitions in interaction. These transitions can be understood as interactional accomplishments that offer children and adults the possibility to align and affiliate themselves with their own and each other's emotional experiences and to explore personal reflections of the emotionally heightened real-life trajectories in a shared make-believe play frame. Based on these findings, it is argued that creating and maintaining emotionally heightened joint play with very young children requires adults' emotional involvement and delicately calibrated participation through leading, following and leading by following. Further empirical study is needed to investigate sequences in which playful and emotional stance taking stand in a non-aligning and non-affiliating relationship. Such research could reveal problem-remedy sequences more evidently and provide important further development of ECE theory and practice for children under the age of three.

Recently, and especially in early childhood education, there has been a transition from understanding child perspective to understanding children’s perspective. Taking children’s perspective as a foundational starting point, we explore and identify moments that children find important, meaningful, and positive in their daily life at the context of preprimary education. We use empirical evidence from our research situated within the cultural context of Finnish early childhood education where children documented their preprimary education experiences with digital cameras and reflected upon them in joint discussions with their peers and researchers. We discuss to what extent these documentation and reflection practices can be used as tools for understanding children’s perspective to meaningful moments in the Finnish preprimary context and what implications this kind of approach would set for curriculum, curriculum assessment, and curriculum development.

This study contributes to the discussion of the policy discourses related to the investment narrative in early childhood education. The article begins by contextualizing the concept of ‘quality’ in a narrative of investing in early childhood education. Employing techniques drawn from the tradition of discourse analysis, the paper highlights the fact that the era of the OECD's inclusive liberalism is fading. Additionally, the study illuminates the fact that the transparent conceptualization of ‘quality’ resonates poorly with these new directions. Finally, the consequences of the inconsistent use of the concept of ‘quality’ will be discussed. In all, this study addresses the need for a profound empirical analysis of the investment narrative that current international early childhood educational policies have adopted and provides a more nuanced understanding of the construction of the concept of ‘quality’ within it.

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.