Category Archives: Physical activities

A grant for our project

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The Finnish National Board of Education has granted our project on Progressive Feedback for 280 000 euro. The grant was clearly the largest sum funded of all applications. This funding is a major support and recognition of our project. The participating municipalities include Espoo, Hyvinkää, Hämeenlinna, Järvenpää, Kerava, Mäntsälä, Nurmijärvi, Sipoo, Turku and Vantaa. The project coordinating municipality is Kouvola. Thank you for the team for a succesful project! The funding will help us to make the best of progressive feedback. We will concentrate on accuracy, depth, topicality and feedback.

 

Progressive feedback as a permanent practice

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In Finland, in municipalities Espoo, Helsinki, Hyvinkää, Hämeenlinna, Järvenpää, Kerava, Mäntsälä, Nurmijärvi, Sipoo, Turku and Vantaa, we make the progressive feedback a permanent practice. The observer training starts in January 2017 and the building and testing of the needed infrastructure and tools starts immediately. From September 2017 onward, every day 180 randomized observations is conducted in different municipalities. When we merge the observation data with skills and learning environment evaluations, we get a real time feedback of the essential processes of early childhood education in Finland. This gives us an opportunity to get hold of these processes and change them in a conscious way. Furthermore, we get instant feedback about the effects of the development work almost in real time, which can be shared and further developed by the community and educators.

Online progressive feedback in ECE

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ryhIn a meeting with the participating municipalities in Finland 3rd December in Vantaa, we discussed about the needs and interests to enhance ECE in each municipality. The municipalities situation, resources and interests are versatile. Our task is to integrate these interests to deepen the online developmental feedback. The purpose is 1) to enhance municipalities’ possibilities to get essential feedback and impact its collection, 2) to enhance the tools and possibilities for online progressive feedback, 3) to connect the feedback with ECE development and 4) to steer ECE development based on valid and real-time understanding. In December 2015 the municipalities get a proposition for the practical issues of feedback. In the next meeting 26th February 2016 we go through the questions and propositions evoked by the proposition. We aim to make the decision about starting progressive feedback in April 2016.

Just as an example, we can keep up with the variety of children’ mean physical activity in different groups (see the figure above) and study the effects of different enhancements.

 

Research instruments

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We have used several different instruments in our data collection. Several of them we have produced by ourselves (the observation instrument includes involvement scale developed by Laevers 1994). According to the principles of open access we provide them for viewing for the research community. However, the copyright of the instruments belongs to Orientation project, which is directed by Jyrki Reunamo. If you are interested to use the instruments in your research, please contact Jyrki Reunamo at the University of Helsinki.

In addition to the instruments described above, we have used tests for reading and writing readiness, math skills, creativity, balance skills, motor skills, stress level testing (cortisol and alpha amylasis) and physical activity monitoring with Polar activity monitors. The original instruments of Observation and Child Evaluation were developed in 1997 (see Reunamo 2007). They were further developed with the help of the Taiwanese team (especially Hui-Chun Lee, Li-Chen Wang and Rosalind Wu, see https://blogs.helsinki.fi/orientate/taiwanese-team/). The original learning environment was developed in 2004 based on the City of Helsinki data (thank to Seppo Sarras) and enhanced during several rounds of quality evaluation with the help of the municipality participants (especially Merja Kivistö, Helena Nurmi, Taija Pölkki, Heli Söderqvist, Kati Timo, Merja Hietala, Marita Käyhkö, Petra Salomaa and Vesa Joronen) between years 2010-2015. The Leadership evaluation was developed in 2014 with the help of Marja-Liisa Akselin and Ulla Soukainen (thank you for Timo Järvensivu).

Funding for Orientation project

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The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture has decided to grant Orientation project. The sum is 180 000 euro and the funding is for 2014-2016. The funding is for enhancing the positive feedback loop of early childhood physical activity. The evaluation of the funded projects was carried on in cooperation with the Academy of Finland, which allowed an international comparison of scientific competence. The funding is a significant recognition of the work done in the  Orientation project and it enables a more flexible work in the future.  Thank you for the participants in the project, who have made this grant possible.

Orientation project tools applied in Turku

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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.

Chang Gung seminar 10th May 2013 presentations

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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!

Dong Hwa University Conference in 18th May

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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.