This Q methodological study explores emotional experiences and coping of daycare staff when working with children of divorce and their families. Two main coping strategies among daycare staff were identified: 1) Confident copers, and 2) Non-confident copers. Interviews exemplify the two main experiences. Both groups may struggle with coping in…

Despite the recent technical and theoretical advances in the investigation of children's social relations, the inherent complexity of these methods may prevent their easy integration into the classroom. A simple and effective tool can be valuable for teachers who wish to investigate students' social realities in the classroom. Therefore,…

The purpose of this study is to examine teachers' reflections of their early childhood special education work in Finnish day care. Work contents and work roles have faced many challenges in Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE), and therefore general reflection and research need to be developed. Teachers ("n"?=?218) evaluated,…

In the present study, the applicability of The Sutter-Eyberg Student Behavior Inventory-Revised (SESBI-R) was explored within a Norwegian sample of 983 children aged 3-8 years. By using an exploratory factor analysis the same 2-factor solution as the original SESBI-R was supported by Principal Component Analysis. Good internal consistency (alpha…

In this study, the merit of using deliberative democratic evaluations is studied in light of ten questions asked by House and Howe, which defined the approach and raise issues of interests, representation, and choice of stakeholders, power balances and procedures for controlling them, participation, reflection and deliberation. Suggestions by…

The purpose of this study is to describe the conceptions of the Finnish and Estonian pre-school teachers' goals, and the achievement of these goals in their pedagogical work. The study consisted of 60 (30 from each country) interviews with pre-school teachers. The interview data was analyzed phenomenographically. The findings showed that children…

Controlled Drawing Observation (CDO) was developed by Tove Krogh and it has been used in Denmark, Finland and Estonia for assessing a child's readiness for school. CDO is a group test, it gives information about a child's functioning in an educational setting and it serves as a starting point for later individual assessment. The goal of the study…

This longitudinal research was designed to examine the prevalence and co-occurrence of peer problems such as rejection, withdrawal, loneliness, bullying, and victimization experienced by children (99 boys, 80 girls) in their everyday lives at daycare, in preschool and first grade of school--each successive spring--at the ages of 5, 6, and 7.…

In this study, the strategies teachers use in home and school collaboration were surveyed. The subjects were early education teachers in Helsinki, Finland. Questionnaires were used for the data collection. Factor analysis resulted in the extraction of six strategy types. Strategies representing parents as the recipients of information were most…

This study was conducted during the academic year 2002-2003 in a municipality in Eastern Finland. It focuses on pre-school education assessing its quality factors from the parents', teachers' and children's points of view. Theoretically, the study focuses on analyses of the purposes of the national core curriculum and pedagogical issues that are…

The aim of this article is to initiate a change of view on quality that goes beyond assumed dichotomies of subjectivity and objectivity. In the view presented here, pedagogical quality is seen as an educational phenomenon of "sustainable dynamism," that is a phenomenon that has structural characteristics and is culturally sensitive. The underlying…

From children's own perspective, play and learning are not always separate in practices during early years. The purpose of this article is, first, to scrutinise the background and character of early years education in terms of play and learning. Second, to elaborate the findings of several years of research about children's learning in preschool…

Each child In Finland and in Estonia receives preschool training for a year before going to school, based on a new national framework curriculum of preschool education. The aim of the present study was to compare children's learning achievements in nine target areas, based on the teacher's evaluations at the end of the preschool year, in both…

Differences between pervasive (home and day-care/school) versus non-pervasive (home only) conduct problems were examined in regard to various child, parent/family, and day-care/school characteristics in an outpatient clinic sample of 120 children aged 4-8 years. All children scored above the 90th percentile on the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory…

The study aimed to investigate the pedagogy and beliefs of Icelandic pre-school and first-grade teachers during times of immense changes in the policy and trends of early childhood education. The practices of 2 pre-school teachers working with the oldest pre-school children and 2 primary school teachers working with the youngest primary school…