The article “Pedagogical leadership and children’s well-being in Finnish early education” by Elina Fonsen, Jyrki Reunamo, Leena Lahtinen and Mari Sillman has been published in the journal Educational Management Administration & Leadership. The article uses the data of the Progressive Feedback. The results show a link between a leader’s pedagogical leadership and children’s observed activities, including learning, positive emotions, physical activity, and participation. In addition, a there is a link between the need for pedagogical leadership assessed by staff and leadership assessed by the manager, which emphasizes the need for the manager to focus on pedagogical leadership and staff involvement. The results provide a perspective that allows the director to focus on the primary task of early childhood education, the well-being of children.

The table above summarizes the themes related to good pedagogical leadership. The director of the kindergarten could attach the table to his wall and check out the most important things of his own management once a week!

An article based on Progressive Feedback data Children’s negative experiences as a part of quality evaluation in early childhood education and care has been accepted for publication in the journal Early Child Development and Care. Children’s evaluations have been used in Progressive Feedback since 2011. In the article, children’s views in evaluating early childhood education is central. The data consists of 5 439 child interviews conducted by the children’s parents and guardians. Peer relations are central to children and difficulties in peer interaction are central to all children in every age group. Children’s views provide essential first hand experiences. Processing children views between adults help the staff and parents to consider children’s point of view. Processing children’s views together with children provides an opportunity to practice interaction skills together with others. Additionally, children’s views help adults to consider children’s solutions. Furthermore,  children’s evaluations help children to learn to impact their own lifes and also the shared commynity with others.  Children’s experience in belonging together with other children is important. Four-year-old children reported most negative peer experiences. The negativity of daily activities increase as children grow older. Also adults’ guidance is experienced more negative as children grow older. For the smallest children the descriptions are often concrete descriptions of mental of physical discomfort. In the table can be seen the trends in children’s negative experiences as children grow older in early childhood education. The article can be accessed at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03004430.2020.1801667.

Evaluation or Early Childhood Education is a multifaceted and complex science and art.Who would be a better judge on the quality of Early Education than the children themselves? Our data suggests that children’s evaluations are a valuable part of the multi-method quality evaluation of early education. Results can be used to develop practices by paying attention to children´s participation and positive aspects that children mention about Early Education. See the new article in Journal of Early Childhood Education and Research.