Category Archives: Research

Children’s orientations in play-based and academically focused preschools in Hong Kong

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Children in the academically oriented preschool had more uncertain and less participative orientations than those in the play-based preschool. Especially boys were vulnerable in conflict settings.  Play-based environment was related with children’s capacities for agentive and participative social engagement, suggesting that play provides children with the opportunity to develop more versatile social tools and strategies. These competences are of vital importance for successful engagement in collective settings such as classrooms and schools. It may be that through play children can practice the production of shared content together with others, which is essential in work and social relations in general. The article can be accessed through the link below:

Cheng, D., Reunamo, J., Cooper, P., Liu, K. & Vong, K. P. (2015). Children’s agentive orientations in play-based and academically focused preschools in Hong Kong. Early child development and care. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2015.1028400.

 

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Hualien workshop1

The first training workshop was completed on Saturday 11 April. There were 57 teachers from 20 preschools joining the project in the East area. The workshop starts at New Taipei City on 19 April. Click on the pictures to get them larger!

Funding for research on multicultural children in early childhood education in Finland

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Outi Arvola is doing her doctoral thesis on the Orientation project data. The data will be ready by 29 May 2015. Outi has been granted 20000 eoros for research on multicultural children in early childhood education. Alli Paasikivi foundation chose Outi’s research from 257 applications, of which only 23 got funding. This means that Outi’s project was regarded being among the very best. Congratulations for Outi!

Observation training in Taiwan

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In Taiwan the observation is from September to December 2015. In every country the observation training is based on same video examples, which have been coded in a similar way in Finland in August 2014. Finnish and Taiwanese researchers sat long hours at the same table looking at the same videos working for a shared understanding of the observed items. With this arrangement we made sure that the researchers in Finland and Taiwan could see the situations in a similar way. Then we use these definitions in the observation training. With this arrangement we seek to make the comparison across countries as accurate as possible. The observers see the same activities and discuss the same definitions. The picture on the left is from the Chung Gung University training for the New Taipei City observers. The picture on the right is from the training in Eastern Taiwan. Click on the pictures to see them larger!

The New Taipei City grant

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ntc
The New Taipei City teachers were introduced to Orientation project on 23th December. The City decided to grant our project. This is very good news. We will get a good sample and we can provide the teachers feedback on their work. We hope we can provide Taiwanese early childhdood teachers a wholesome picture of the path to well-being for young children.

Finnish observers ready

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ipp  In Finland almost 300 observers were trained to observe the everyday activities of early childhood education. The observed items include general activity, children’s activity, children’s object of attention, physical activity, involvement, emotions, social orientation and the activity of the nearest educator. Between January and May 2015 every minute four observations based on random sampling is conducted somewhere in Southern Finland. The picture is from the Helsinki training. Other training places were Hämeenlinna and Turku. The observers send their greeting to other observers in Asia!

IBM & Big Data

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Orientation project and IBM have been cooperating since 2009. The cooperation has been concentrated around the KidSmart heritage, see https://blogs.helsinki.fi/simulaatio/. The 10-year old tradition of providing Finnish early childhood education kindergartens and preschools KidSmart computers has now come to the end. We are happy to announce that the cooperation continues. IBM cooperation in Finnish early learning  will continue and  the flagship in 2015 will be analytics part of the Orientation 2.0′ project to understand how and why the kids do actually learn – the massive research to be done and data gatherer in four countries and with more than 100000 observations. The plan is that the IBM part of the research  – the analytics –  will be funded by IBM Impact Grant program funded by  CSR / Celia. The discussions to proceed with the project  to secure funding as part of IBM Impact Grant program have started. Descriptions of IBM analytics are introduced here.