Teemu Nikkola, Jonna Kangas and Jyrki Reunamo have written an article Children’s creative participation as a precursor of 21st century skills in Finnish early childhood education and care context, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Learning and Individual Differences. The data is from Progressive Feedback observation and child evaluations. Children’s creative participation was examined using the social orientation theory together with the LI-SYC to focus on their involvement in class activities. The results showed that children’s creative participation was related to their skills and competencies, involvement, and play as a class activity. The results emphasize the significance of creative participation as an indicator of quality and learning in ECEC. Creativity is not an easy phenomenon for environments, especially in the context of education. Openness of the creative process makes it more difficult to control than a predetermined process. Uncertainty of the result and number of different ideas in creative process must be tolerated. New, different ideas may challenge the norms and achieve resistance. In creative processes, an individual must be considered to be an integral part of a complex social system. Play itself can be understood as a pathway for societal participation when considering participation and scaffolding the development of participatory skills. Scaffolding creative participation in the context and educational culture of ECEC as an open process should be conscious. The table shows the essential connection between creativity and deep learning. There should be a balanced amount of structure and autonomy in a creative process (click figure to make it bigger). Read the article at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104160802400030X.

Aada Heikkilä’s study examines the connection between the years that children spent in early childhood education and care (ECEC) and their social orientations and main objects of attention. The data were collected within the Progressive Feedback project by observing children: 20,457 observations of 972 six-year-olds from 360 child groups in Finland. According to the results, the years children spent in ECEC have a connection to their social orientations and main objects of attention, and differences between genders were discovered. The longer the children had attended ECEC, the less adaptive orientation was observed. The children that had attended ECEC for under a year were observed to be the least participative. Dominant orientation increased the longer the children had attended ECEC. Those that had been in ECEC for more than four years rarely paid attention to non-social objects and adults and often paid attention to several children.

As both participative and dominant social orientations include impacting the learning environment in early education, we can conclude that children with more years in early are education are more agentive in comparison to children with less time in early education. The results can be seen in the Table (click it to enlarge it). The observers did not know how long the children had spent time in early education, which mean that the found differences are not based on the observers presuppositions. The results are statistically significant. All in all, the more time you spend in early education, the more agency you have in social situations!

Aada Heikkilä & Jyrki Reunamo (2023) The years children spent in early education in relation to their social relations and objects of attention, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, DOI: 10.1080/1350293X.2023.2254534

Teemu Nikkola et al. have written an article about creativity in education ‘Children’s creative thinking abilities and social orientations in Finnish early childhood education and care’. The journal is Early Child Development and Care. The data is from Progressive Feedback. The perspective of creativity is important both from the personal and environmental points of view. Creativity includes all kinds of everyday activities in kindergarten – not just arts or planned creativity. The personal aspects of creativity highlight the importance of valuing children’s creative efforts, even though the act may have been created by others previously. The environmental aspects of creativity highlight the importance of children participating in the creation of both the curriculum content and educational conduct. The article is open access and can be downloaded from the link at the end of the post.

In the table, we can see how child interviews and separately conducted creativity test (Torrance) are related. In participative orientation, children concern the situation and intend to change it. The strategy highlights contact with others’ and children’s agency. In participation, children learn to build the future while at the same time considering others. The sooner the children can practice their creative abilities, the better they are ready to take part in the creation of their lives and also the lives of others. Teemu is strongly weaving creativity into the everyday experiences of children and the creation of early education. Click the link below!

Nikkola, T., Reunamo, J. & Ruokonen, I. (2020). Children’s creative thinking abilities and social orientations in Finnish early childhood education and care. Early Child Development and Care. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2020.1813122