Multi-voiced development in Finnish early childhood education practices

1 ©2019 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research Vol. 18, No. 11, pp. 1-17, November 2019 https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18.11.1 Multi-Voiced Development in Finnish Early Childhood Education Practices Jonna Kangas Faculty of Educational Science, University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland Tuulikki Ukkonen-Mikkola Faculty of Education and Culture, University of Tampere Tampere, Finland Abstract. Early childhood education (ECE) is the first step of a lifelong learning pathway. In Finland, the institutions of ECE have went through many chances in recent years and the ongoing development of policies and practices of young children’s educational system have been the focus of many projects and much research. In this paper researchers describe and analyse how dynamic development in regional development projects is implemented in teacher training programs, ECE field work and research in boundary spaces. The researchers describe the Finnish ECE system, its policies and practices to form a basis for the development project. Through that the basic principles of development are illustrated. The essential voices of participants of the project are introduced to form a picture of shared development goals, through opportunities and challenges, in multi-voiced community of education. Finally, the development work of ECE in the light of international knowledge of ECE is discussed. The findings of this research suggest that development in a multi-voiced community with different participators and organizations of the ECE can be successful and that the partnership approach can be development to create an active learning society of students, practical teachers and researchers. Keywords: Development process; Teacher education; Early childhood education; Multi-voiced community; Partnership. 1. Introduction During the recent years Finland, as many other countries, has tried to develop its’ systems of early childhood education (ECE). In this development process in Finland some basic principles have been identified by researchers. The first principle is that ECE is based on academic teacher education, which provides a theoretical and practical basis for the pedagogy of ECE (Hujala 2008). Through 2 ©2019 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved. high-quality teacher education developmental principles for pedagogy can be built through research-based knowledge which supports understanding and supporting the child’s development. This also requires a strong and complex professional understanding which, according to Karila and Kinos (2012), can be divided into four types of relationships; the relationship with the children and parents, the work team and other expert groups. Therefore, Finnish ECE can be considered as multi-voiced (and multi-professional) educational environment where children’s development and learning is supported. Venninen et al. (2012) have also shown in their research that ongoing learning and continuing education in teacher’s profession is essential for the development of the Finnish ECE practices. The same finding occurs in a country report by the OECD (Taguma & al. 2012) while educators’ possibilities to develop their professional skills are supported in a national level. This ongoing learning requires multivoiced communities, where practical teachers of ECE (as the voice of the practical issues), university teacher and researchers (as the voice of theoretical knowledge) and teacher students (as the voices of the future) can share their experiences and conceptions about developing ECE and teacher education. In early childhood education this kind of co-operation and development between the working life and education have been rarely addressed in research, but examples of same kind of processes aiming to raise social work professionals understanding about academic knowledge for better decision making in practices have been studied by Gannon-Leary and Carr (2010) who argue that it is possible to create new culture of action where the theoretical knowledge becomes part of the practical decision making. This research paper focuses on recent changes in Finnish ECE through the development project Seutuvarha which operates in both the academic teacher training program and the public ECE services. The aim of this paper is to analyse and describe how dynamic development in a regional project is implemented through multi-voiced communities. We focus on illustrating the forming processes through three basic principles of development. The voices of participants of the project have been found essential to form and work towards shared development goals. Therefore we adopt the narrative approach to describe existing challenges of the project from the perspectives of researchers, teacher students and the practical teachers in ECE. The research questions are: 1. What kind of supporting structures do the participants experience in the multi-voiced communities of development? 2. What kind of preventing structures do the participants experience in the multi-voiced communities of development? 2. The Finnish early childhood education context The Finnish national education policy guides the activities of ECE, as all other levels of the education system. (Ministry of Education and Culture 2019). The basic value is that everyone in Finland have equal possibility to participate to high-quality training and education. This provides state funded teacher 3 ©2019 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved. education. The teacher training for ECE teachers is located in higher education faculties. The training is based on studies of the educational science and the approaches of sociology, childhood, psychology, cultural studies and many didactical contexts (e.g. literature, math, natural sciences and arts education). The qualification for ECE teachers is stated by law (The Act of Early Childhood Education 540/2018). The ECEC working team in the classes consists of three staff members; there is one teacher with Bachelor’s or Master’s degree and one to two assistant teachers with secondary level education degrees (see Kangas, Ojala, and Venninen 2015). Finnish ECE is guided by two recently updated national documents, ´National core curriculum for early childhood education and care’ (2018) and ‘National Core Curriculum for Pre-primary Education’ (2014). These normative documents obligate ECE professionals to the continuous and long-term development in the ECE organisations. This development process of ECE practices demands a reflective orientation in ECE communities. (See also Kangas & al. 2019; Venninen et al. 2012). The Finnish ECE is understood to consist support for children’s wellbeing through care, education and teaching. This so-called “educare” model where learning through play has centre stage (see Leinonen, Ojala & Venninen, 2015) is based on sociocultural learning framework where the development is seen as ongoing process of education, it is based on social interaction and it forms a mutual understanding about the goals and evaluation of development through social processes and interpersonal relationships and interaction between the educators, children, parents, administrators and researchers (National core curriculum for early childhood education and care 2018; Smith 1996). The ECE in Finland is based on high quality professional work by teachers. In their everyday work they observe children’s development and skills, interact with children, design learning opportunities, evaluate activities and children’s learning and finally reflect on their own professional skills, cultural routines of class and policy documents such as curriculums to develop the implementation of ECE pedagogy further (see Kangas et al. 2019; Karila and Kinos 2012; Ukkonen-Mikkola & Fonsén 2018). The pedagogical activities are planned by teachers to provide all children equal opportunities in education, support sociability, and facilitate early intervention in learning difficulties. Overall, the goals of the Finnish ECE are to support the children’s balanced development, growth, wellbeing and create the pathway for a lifelong learning. (National core curriculum for early childhood education and care 2018.) 3. Seutuvarha - development through multi-voiced communities The goals of Seutuvarha project were published in spring 2012 as a starting point for the development work in ECE. Seutuvarha project aims to form a community of learners and researchers. New dialogic approach will be created through interaction between the theoretical and practical knowledge, where the development work will be shared. In education policies assumptions about learning transfer are often based on simplistic notions of research (Hager & 4 ©2019 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved. Hodkinson, 2009). Transferring academic knowledge to practices and, above all, evaluating this learning process through critical lenses requires, spaces for dialogue, both virtual and real meeting points (Gannon-Leary and Carr, 2010), where interaction can take place and where it will have support. The Seutuvarha project is viewed to be a community of research and development where teacher students, teachers from the ECE field, teachers and researchers from universities create shared knowledge and aims towards high quality learning and teaching practices. One of the essential development principles was the idea of dialogic approach where the creating of knowledge is based on interaction between the participants. In this learning cycle different opinions and views meet in an open atmosphere (see Engeström et al. 1999). An important item in the successful development work is the participation of the members of society. In general participation means that each participant is respected and that they have an opportunity to become listened to and express opinions about the joint issue, through interaction and dialogue the participants can then create a learning culture of shared meanings (see Venninen et al. 2012).In the Seutuvarha project the development of teacher education is not the only seen as responsibility of the department of teacher education in the University. It is considered through political and social concepts about teachers’ profession in the society and therefore the development is an issue for all the members of the ECE community. Lyra (2010) states that a multi-voiced dialogical approach creates opportunities that can construct the discussion for common perspectives and joint activity. Also, the development of ECE practices is seen as a dialogic process of all the participants. All these members of organizations also have their own goals for ECE work to negotiate with others. Also, Gannon-Leary and Carr (2010) have found the importance of shared informal learning processes, where they highlight the interaction between practitioners. The development can be viewed as a joint activity of participants through a transformation of the practices and tools they use in everyday interaction, or through a transformation of the situation as opening up some possibilities for further action and same time closing others (Wells& Claxton 2002). In the Seutuvarha project spaces for this interaction have been created in different occasions. These goals and working procedures are based on the dialogic approach where the development relies on the idea that the development process itself is the link between partners. Dialogue is, however, a complex phenomenon where multitude dimensions, both supportive and restrictive, can be identified. Constraints can be, for example, different conceptions of the phenomenon or varied working cultures (Lyra 2010). In the development processes it is essential to discuss about common goals for the process. The setting up of shared goals requires that both policies and participants’ values, beliefs and conceptions about childhood, early learning and teaching are documented and discussed. Virtual meeting points are essential for dialogue when there are not enough chances for all of the participants to come together to discuss. In this project the 5 ©2019 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved. virtual meeting points were essential, because participants working in the field could hardly come together during the working days. Therefore, in the starting of the project a Seutuvarha blog was created as a place for dialog considering the developmental issues of the project. The blog was constantly updated with news about research findings, best practices of the field and themes of studies from both students and university staff. The possibilities of the online sharing have been found in research and development projects where the professional knowledge and practices were shared and developed online in multi-agency teams. Gannon-Leary and Carr (2010) state that “Web-based community networks create possibilities to share knowledge through online databases more efficiently updated than printed sources. Gannon-Leary and Carr (2010) highlight the possibilities of electronic networking between organizations and in the multi-agency working, but indicate that for functional development work ‘New information tools are needed: they are likely to be electronic, portable, fast, easy to use, connected to both a large valid database of knowledge and the client record, and a servant of clients as well as practitioners.’ 4. Methods Context of the Study This research paper focuses on the regional research and development project in the area of Tampere region called Seutuvarha (seutu from region and varha from varhaiskasvatus which means early childhood education). The Seutuvarha project started in 2012 and the main principle of the project is co-operation between University of Tampere (research and teacher training unit) and seven municipal ECE offices (producers of public early education services). Through these municipal ECE organizations the kindergarten teachers, other educators, managers of schools and especially the mentoring teachers have been participating in the project. The project itself has been considered as a space for interaction between university teachers and researchers, teacher students (3 classes with 50-65 students) and six municipalities with 54 particular schools. The meeting points for participants have been created within the studies (for example theory based lectures for students and teachers from practice in the context of theory and research to bring their own experiences and conceptions into the shared discussion), in learning at work periods (where the responsibility of practical educational work with reflection is shared by student and practical teachers in interaction), in mentoring courses (where researchers and practical teachers meet to discuss and reflect the practices of scaffolding teacher students), in the context of research and development projects (where researcher observe ECE practices and policies and share their knowledge with practical teachers, administrators and students through lectures and writings) and in online platforms, such the e-learning courses for students and practice teachers and finally in a project blog to combine all the items mentioned above to be documented and discussed in an open-access environment. 6 ©2019 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved. Participants Seutuvarha participants were practical teachers of early childhood education working in the municipal kindergartens and pre-primary schools and participating in a course of mentoring practices. The course was organized twice during the school year. In first run there were 20 participants and in the second run there were 16 participants (see figure 1). Participants were also researchers and university teachers from Faculty of Education responsible of teacher education in early childhood education program. 4 of researchers were participating in the Seutuvarha practices. Finally students participating in their practical courses were also participants of Seutuvarha development. Total of 30 students participated in the research (see figure 1). All participants agreed to the terms of research and accepted to participate in interviews and focus-groups for research and developmental purposes. Data collection methods The focus of this research was to gain knowledge and understand the development structures in the Seutuvarha project through the voices of participating teacher students, ECE teachers and university staff. This approach considered participants as active agents who are capable of analyse and develop their work (Freire 2000) with a support of a facilitator – the researchers in this case - who participates in the development process and respect the participants as owners of their understanding and knowledge (see Kangas 2016; Edwards 2011; Fals-Borda & Rahman 1991). Data from the participants was collected during 2013-2015 through participatory approach methods where the researchers wanted to value the personal and shared experiences of participants. The data was collected from online discussions of practical teachers who work as mentors to teacher students, interviews of tutoring researchers, online students’ forums during learning-atwork courses and from the Seutuvarha blog, where kindergarten teachers, researcher and students wrote their reflections about development of ECE practice, teacher education curriculum and learning at work (see figure 1). 7 ©2019 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved. Figure 1. The process of data collection and analysis The collection of data was complicated process because the researcher wanted to understand the perspectives of all participants throughout the development process during the year. Therefor the researchers adopted abductive approach for weaving all the different voices of development to examine shared goals and recognizing structures that prevented and supported the process. We will next introduce our analysis pathway. Framework for analysis This paper was conducted in an ongoing triangulation process between the authors. The first phase of analysis was based on content analysis in which the data was read through and challenging issues as ‘meanings’ considering ethical questions were identified. In the second phase, these meanings were considered through an abductive approach. Abduction as a research process can be viewed through intuition or as a kind of a systematized creativity in research to create ‘new’ knowledge (Kangas 2016; Andreewsky and Bourcier 2000). In this research, the abductive approach was adopted to create new knowledge about the structures of development through and with the participating voices. With the abductive content analysis the identified challenges were discussed and evaluated based on the theoretical background in shared meetings of researchers. This process is called as theory matching by Kovách and Spens (2005) and in this research it aimed to recognize the supporting and preventing structures of development by multitude voices of participants (see figure 1). Founded structures of development were discussed and critically evaluated 8 ©2019 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved. through the triangulation process of the researchers. Research triangulation was conducted to ensure that the analysis was based on valid understanding and previous knowledge (Kangas & al. 2019; Golafshani 2003). The triangulation between the researchers was essential in the abductive analysis cycle and through it the understanding about development was created, interpreted and reproduced through several cycles. Limitations of the research There are some limitations concerning the validity of this research. One possible limitation is that the data were collected during practical courses and in-serviceteacher training at the university. The researchers’ commitment to organising these activities and relationships between participants and researchers can affect negatively the objectivity and validity of the data collection and the whole study. (see Atkins and Wallace 2012). However the triangulation process explained above was used to gain objectivity to findings and work through reflective practice towards the validity of the research (Ojala & Venninen al. 2011; Golafshani 2003). 5. Findings In the next chapter we bring up the voices of the participants considering the experiences and understanding of structures in Seutuvarha-development project. Voice of teaching practices - the teachers Mentoring teachers brought up satisfaction of co-operation between university and working life. In first quote states, that mentors are engaged to co-operation and in second quote representative of ECE appreciate the possibility of cooperation. “This is quite new in our school. I think, that we are very engaged and want to develop this co-operation with university.” “It is so important, that surrounding municipalities and schools have become involved in this co-operation.” The teachers also indicated the meaning of excitement and motivation of participating in the project. They stated that they felt proud to be involved in the teacher education processes and get in-service teacher training to understand and implementing in the practice scientific findings and through them the future of ECE practices. Representatives of ECE field emphasized that they can benefit from the co-operation. “Mentors are trained about how to instruct students. Participating in [university courses] also helps for understanding other matters…gives positive resource to the field work.” Mentoring kindergarten teacher brought out, on the other hand, the importance of getting to know future kindergarten teachers’ while they still were students. They explained how important it is to know and participate the discussion about the education of teacher student to shape the future ECE: 9 ©2019 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved. “…it is possible to meet students through this project... in the future it means that we get also new employers.’ ‘I feel strongly, that we teachers get the most benefit [from this project]. We get to know how future kindergarten teacher are trained and what important [knowledge] is.” During the project participants have had chances to reflect on their own work. In this quotation critical observations have been done by one of the mentoring teachers. The second quotation continues from where the first ends to reflect also the pedagogical work done with children. “Yes, what was now read in this feedback...the importance of interaction between mentor and students. It is never too old idea. Dialogical interaction is very important...” “And there are still many challenges in our pedagogical work [with children]. It is worth in a group [of mentors] to think a little that how we are doing these [everyday] matters, these routines.” One of the goals of Seutuvarha project was research and developmental cooperation. It was valued, but mentioned, that it has been quite marginally used during the past year. In the next quotations bring up this matter. “I don´t now suddenly remember anything. It can be also in small-scale, but I think, it is very important part of… so we can be with this development.’ ‘So, I hope at least, that it (research and developmental work) would be…that it has been perhaps limited during this spring.” The teachers used the Seutuvarha blog for reflecting on their learning experiences considering the group learning activities of mentor training and mentoring. Some of them also shared writings about their best ECE development practices and commented others development ideas, like in these quotes: “...the pedagogical planning is shared activity with children, and it could start from everyday chatting where child brings out his interest.” “So wonderful observations! It has been interesting to read your ideas...my thoughts [about the development] have strengthened and I have got new ideas to explore with students!” However, reflection in the e-learning platform was considered challenging. The teachers found it problematic to find time to document and to share their experiences online and they have a lack of ICT skills. On the other hand they find it important to read others experiences: “So little time to read and write responses at the computer. So much to tell...!” Voices of the theoretical knowledge - the researchers Tutoring researchers from University have been analysing their role through scaffolding approach, like in this quotes below where researchers describe their goals about the meetings in schools during students’ learning at work courses: “I wish I could scaffold teacher students learning in practice, also support their mentoring kindergarten teachers working in the field of 16 ©2019 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved. “Yes, this is improving the overall quality of early childhood education. It´s excellent, that this university knowledge is applied to the wider province.” References Act of Early Childhood Education 540/2018 (2018). Ministry of Education. Finland. Andreewsky, E., & Bourcier, D. (2000). Abduction in language interpretation and law making. Kybernetes 29(7/8), 836-845. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920010341991 Ammentorp, L., & Madden, L. (2014). 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