Teachers’ Perspectives on children’s agency and participation in kindergarten in Finland

• Main Author: Bountri, Manthoula
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för tema 2020
• Subjects: agency; participation; teachers’ perspectives; daily established routines; planned activities; Social Sciences; Samhällsvetenskap
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-172529

The present study aims to explore and delve into early childhood education teachers’ perception and interpretation of children’s agency and participation in the daily routines and planned activities in kindergartens in Finland. The daily established routines and planned activities take a significant amount of time in kindergarten. Therefore, it is essential to scrutinize how teachers engage children’s preferences, opinions, and participation in daily practice. The abovementioned rationale motivates the present qualitative research study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five early childhood teachers. Three of them work in international kindergartens and two of them in bilingual kindergartens (Finnish-English). The interview consisted of open-ended questions. They were structured to probe early childhood teachers’ experience in respect of the implementation of children’s agency and participation in the daily practices and the challenges that pedagogical personnel face.  The collected data from the semi-structured interview were analyzed through thematic analysis. On one hand, the results showed a none or limited amount of children’s agency and participation in the daily established routines, whereas the amount of agency and participation is increased regarding the planned activities. On the other hand, challenging parameters are the management of the kindergarten and the number of children in a group.