In Helsinki, we have collected more than 10 000 observation in the term of 2017-2018. Feedback of the results was delivered for all kindergarten principals. For example, the results support the new guidelines for increasing planning time. Also, happy to announce that the objectives for physical activity were met in Helsinki! Congratulations.
Ege University has use Orientation project tools for observation, child evaluation and learning environment evaluation to study Turkish pre-school. In Turkey, pre-school is usually half-day activity. Often there is only one teacher for a group of twenty-five children. There are interesting differences, but also a lot of interesting similarities. We hope we can start reporting of the results soon!
The participating municipalities and cities shared their development in a whole day conference in Helsinki. The municipalities do excellent development work and the day was very inspiring. A lot of good things have happened, but we still have a lot of work ahead. In the picture, city of Hämeenlinna present their plan of pedagogical principals doing the observations, giving staff feedback and building development tasks together. An exciting plan, that can be executed in reality. Among other new developments, we are going to enhance the observation of childminders and Helsinki starts Progressive Feedback process with the city playgrounds, this will give everybody a fresh perspective!
Pr
ogressive Feedback (PF) cooperation between Finland and China is getting concrete. On Thursday 26 April 2018, In the Chinese Ministry of Education, Department of Ethnic Minorities, we agreed to conduct Chinese early education enhancement research & development project based on Finnish PF. We will have close working research teams in Finland and China. We’ll have 200 observers trained by Finnish experts to get a valid picture of Chinese early education and to give guidelines for future development. The picture is from the successful meeting at the Ministry. From the left is Tibet representant Sherab Songmo, Jouni Veijalainen, Jyrki Reunamo, the Director of the National Education Development Center Yan Guo, mr Han, the Director of the Center for Quality Monitoring and Research Xianqiang Zhou and Frank Wen.
We have started a pilot, in which individual kindergartens, groups and maybe even children can get real-time feedback of their processes. In the first stage the pilot includes Siimapuisto kindergarten in Vantaa and Nummenkylä kindergarten in Järvenpää. We aim to have the tools ready by spring 2019 and it is applicable then also in other kindergartens and with childminders. The picture is from the first observation training in Siimapuisto 15 March 2018.
Kati Rintakorpi’s dissertation From documentation towards pedagogical documentation in early
childhood was examined 26 January 2018 at the University of Helsinki. Opponent was professor Eeva Hujala and custos professor Lasse Lipponen. In the quantitative part of the dissertation Orientation project data was used. The results indicated that pedagogical documentation is related, for example, to children’s more positive emotions but also to educators’ greater absence from the situation (click on the table on the left). The dissertation is unfortunately in Finnish, but at least the abstract and the articles are in English.
It is one small step for early educator, one giant leap for early education! To start using the new progressive feedback interface with a regular web-browser. In the interface there are both readymade analysis and a possibility to edit the results in many ways, resulting in a versatile and real-time feedback for the early educators. Now the cities have access to Finnish results in real time. What’s more, now the city’s own results can be seen in comparison. We have started a new era in the evaluation, feedback and development of Early Childhood Education.
The cooperation between China and Orientation project at the University of Helsinki is getting more profound. China is fast becoming the leader globally also in educational quality and development. The awareness of the importance of Early Childhood Education is getting stronger in China. Finland is small in comparison to China, but we can provide the tested tools of progressive feedback to guide the development. Our main partner in the project is the CEAIE Education Committee. The Shanghai Expo Invitation is available here.
A new article about immigrant children’s participation has been published. The research data includes more than 300 immigrant children observed in their daily activities. Especially peer relations are important, but the educator is the one who can help these children in positive participation. You can read the article by clicking the link below.
Arvola, O., Lastikka, A-L. & Reunamo, J. (2017). Increasing Immigrant Children’s Participation in the Finnish Early Childhood Education Context. The European journal of social & behavioural sciences EJSBS, 20 (3), 2539-2548.
In the National Finnish television (Ylen Aamutv) on 23 Sep our project was presented. The progressive feedback in early education is a unique project globally with important new insight. Unfortunately the program is only in Finnish, see Yle Areena.