EARLI 2017 presentations

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We have three presentation in EARLI 2017 conference 29 Aug – 2.Sep:

Enhancing Physical Activity in Taiwanese Early Childhood Education and Care Jyrki Reunamo, University of Helsinki, Finland; Li-Chen Wang, Chang Gung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan; Hui-Chun Lee, Tzu Chi University, Taiwan.

How to implement the observation strategies to raise the Quality of Early Childhood Education (ECEC) James Ko, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Jyrki Reunamo, University of Helsinki, Finland; Hui-Chun Lee, Tzu Chi University, Taiwan; Li-Chen Wang, Chang Gung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan; Hui-Hua Chen, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan; Shu-Shuan Shih, Tzu Chi University, Taiwan.

Progressive feedback in Finnish Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) Jyrki Reunamo, University of Helsinki, Finland; Li-Chen Wang, Chang Gung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan; Hui-Chun Lee, Tzu Chi University, Taiwan; Shu-Chuan Shih, National Taitung University, Taiwan; Hui-Hua Chen, Dong Hwa University, Taiwan.

Progressive feedback in Early Years

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In Finland, Progressive feedback in Early Years is a project funded by the National Agency for Education. There are 12 municipalities participating in the project, which aims for sustainable development of ECE. We develop tools, measures and practices, with which we can get valid and reliable research results on Early Education activities.We also aim for data driven feedback for the educators and experts of Early Education. We have a conference describing the project and working out future plans 16 August, with some Taiwanese examples to share with the Finnish participants.

Taiwanese colleagues have arrived

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Taiwanese researchers, teachers and students have arrived in Finland. They will be introduced to Finnish Early Education, day care centers, kindergarten teacher studies and research on the subject. Our colleagues also have produced new development models for their work and they are eager to discuss them with Finnish teachers. We have also done similar data collection in Finland and the comparison have resulted in a lot of interesting similarities and differencies across cultures. You can meet the Taiwanese colleagues, for example, at the Progressive feedback conference in 16th August in Helsinki.

Self-regulation

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Self-regulation is the key when children learn to pioneer the path of their lifes and to take their life in their own hands. Jouni Veijalainen’s, Jyrki Reunamo’s and Alisa Alijoki’s article Children’s self-regulation skills in the Finnish day care environment has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Early Childhood Education Research. In the article, it is shown clearly that children’s skills are not separate but are highly intertwined. We hope that the article helps educators to see the ingredients of self-regulation better. Because social skills are also related to self-regulation, these skills expand to shared other-regulation too. It means that children learn to shape of things to come.

How to consider observers?

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Municipality representatives (click for a bigger picture)

In Finland, we have 12 cities and municipalities participating in the observation. In a meeting 11 April, we had a meeting with the municipalities’ representatives to plan the best possible observation training. We have two aims: Firstly, we need to have a valid and reliable observation. Secondly, we need to take good care of the observers. They need to get an experience of doing an important job. They also need to acquire personal development and insight by doing the observation. We need to build a system that the observers want to stick with, to ensure a sustainable and evolving progressive feedback.

Leadership and children’s experiences

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Taru Terho studied leadership in day care centres and its connection with children’s everyday activities in the setting. The main finding has been that the directors’ views and ways to conduct pedagogical leadership was connected with children’s everyday activities. Leadership was not just about management or staff leadership, it had connections with children’s experiences. The connections were measured by totally independent measures of observation and directors’ evaluations, which increase the reliability of the findings. For example, good leadership was connected with good quality play in the day care centre. Unfortunately, only Taru’s abstract is in English.

Physical activity lessons from Finland?

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Unfortunately our results describing children’s physical activity in Early Education are published only in Finnish. The first small article about our latest results in English has just been published in Nursery World. Even though there are still a lot of things to enhance in Finland, there may also be some things that could be used in other countries too, see Jyrki Reunamo: Physical activity: some lessons from Finland).