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