Dr. Cheng’s visit includes preparing future collaboration and research projects. We also work on the comparison of children’s orientations in different educational settings. Dr. Cheng will be in Finland until 9th November 2013. Thus we have also plenty of time to report on our research findings.
ToLiVa- project (Physical activity culture in Early Childhood Education) has been granted 50000 euros for applying the tools of Orientation project to the mentoring of physical activity development. The project is directed by Turku University of Applied sciences and the partners include Turku Art Academy, the city of Turku, LiikU ry, Valo ry and others. The project will be applied in the eastern Turku day care centers, with childminders and municipal playgrounds.
In child evaluation one evaluated item was children’s creativity in pretend play. Now our article Children’s Creativity in Day Care has been accepted for publication in Early Child Development and Care. Creativity is not restricted to art or educational processes, rather, it manifests itself most clearly in children peer relations where children create their learning environment in a shared processes.
Reunamo, J., Lee, H-C., Wang, L-C., Ruokonen, I., Nikkola, T. & Malmstrom, S. (In print). Creativity in day care. Early Child Development and Care.
In Reunamo’s and Pipere’s new article “Education for Sustainable Development Research from the Researchers’ Point of View” the theoretic principles of Orientation project are applied to researchers. Researchers from eleven countries evaluate their relations to the environment they study. The same orientations can be found for both young children and researchers! Researchers’ way of considering the environment they were studying was reflected both in the important aspects of the research and the way the researchers did their research. The wide application of children’s orientations to scientific research is exciting. the article is published in the Journal of Education for Sustainable Development. The journal home pages are at http://jsd.sagepub.com/. The article can be found, for example, with a keyword Reunamo.
In the European Early Childhood Education and Research Journal an article about “Perceiving change in role play” has just been published. The authors are Reunamo, Lee, Wang, Wu, Mau & Lin. The article is based on the 2010 research results. The article can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1350293X.2013.789193#.UcLMTawrgqI
A new article on research orientations has been published by Reunamo and Pipere in the Journal of Education for Sustainable Development. The article title is “Education for Sustainable Development Research from the Researchers’ Point of View” . In the article the model of children’s orientations is applied to researchers orientations. Researchers from 19 countries described their orientations. Similar orientations can be found for researchers and day care children! The wide applicability of the orientations is mindbending. The journal home page is at http://jsd.sagepub.com. The article can be found by the search word Reunamo.
Dr. Doris Cheng Pui-wah from the Hong Kong Institute of Education has applied the Orientation project interview instrument to compare two different types of learning environment. The preliminary results show for example that in academic-oriented pre-schools children have more uncertain and adaptive views which are related to uncertain relationships with teachers and peers. On the other hand in a more child-centered kindergarten children have more agentive and open views describing more harmonic interaction with teachers and peers. These preliminary results reveal exciting possibilities for building a nourishing social LE, for analyzing social interaction and for evaluating social interaction. The first glimpses of the mind-blowing research can be found here.
The seminar on Children’s Living and Learning at the Department of Child Education and Care at Chang Gung University of Science and Technology presentations are now available!
The 2013 International Conference on Early Childhood Education Pro-Development and Agentive Practice in Dong Hwa University in Hualien was rich both intellectually and emotionally. Both Finnish and Taiwanese developers presented their development models based on the research results. The presenters themselves were best examples of ECEC developers who were aware of the difficulties but also saw the value of their work and presented their results with pride and respect. Thank you all who made it possible! The conference handbook can be retrieved here.
The Department of Child Education and Care at Chang Gung University of Science and Technology organized a seminar on Children’s Living and Learning ~ from children’s perspectives in May 10th 2013. The seminar was an unusually succesful sharing of research findings. We also found mutual interests and seek to collaborate in the near future. The seminar outlook can be retrieved in here. The presentations will be published in the blog soon.