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The study draws on a relational and intersectional approach to young children’s belonging in Finnish educational settings. Belonging is conceptualized as a multilevel, dynamic, and relationally constructed phenomenon. The aim of the study is to explore how children’s belonging is shaped in the intersections between macro-, meso-, and micro-levels of young children’s education in Finland. The data consist of educational policy documents and ethnographic material generated in educational programs for children aged birth to 8 years. A situational mapping framework is used to analyze and interpret the data across and within systems levels (macro-level; meso-level; and micro-level). The findings show that the landscape in which children’s belonging is shaped and the intersections across and within the levels are characterized by the tensions between similarities and differences, majority and minorities, continuity and change, authority and agency. Language used, practices enacted, and positional power emerge as the (re)sources through which children’s (un)belonging is actively produced.

This research explored how values are communicated in everyday life at preschool. This narrative inquiry focused on how values are conveyed through the use of a material artefact, a chart with traffic lights, as a communication and pedagogical tool. Twenty children aged 3–4 years in one Finnish preschool were involved in the initial data collection, together with five practitioners. The initial research data consisted of observations and video records from activities in the preschool. On three subsequent occasions across an 18-month period, further reflective discussions were held with the same practitioners about using the traffic lights as a pedagogical tool. The findings highlighted that opposite values, like practitioners’ discipline and children’s right to participate, could be communicated around the same practice. Telling and retelling stories about everyday pedagogical work, such as use of the chart with traffic lights, made practitioners more aware about ethical aspects of early childhood education and also revealed something about their emotions and morality. While values statements are written into the curriculum, values in practice are constantly communicated through the social, cultural and the material environment.

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The study is part of a Nordic research project that aims to explore values education. The aim of the study is to examine researcher experiences with conducting video observations and share understandings regarding the methodological and ethical challenges of such observations in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings in Finland and Iceland. The study asked the following question: What methodological and ethical challenges do researchers confront while studying values using video observations in preschools? This chapter is inspired by Merleau-Ponty and his theory of the life-world, which suggests that the body is the basis of all human experiences. According to this theory, the researcher exists in the life-worlds of the children and practitioners through his/her bodily being. The current study’s research material consists of researcher reflections regarding video recordings, written field notes, and researcher diaries, as well as researchers’ embodied experiences during the research process. The findings indicated that during the research process, the researchers faced several methodological and ethical challenges related to values. Three intertwined methodological and ethical challenges were identified: researcher participation and reactions in the lived moment, reciprocity in co-constructions of roles, and respecting the perspective of others. The findings raised issues concerning ethical considerations that are at the core of relational methodologies, such as how researchers influence life in preschools and how researchers should interpret videos in which they themselves are involved. Building trust between us, as researchers, and the participants in the study was important when observing the lived values of education.

This study is part of a research project exploring values education in Nordic preschools. The study approaches the value of belonging from a relational perspective with the aim of deepening our understanding of how the politics of belonging emerges in children’s play situations in Finnish preschools. The politics of belonging refers to the processes by which belonging and exclusion are constructed in children’s daily lives. The study applies three axes of belonging (categorization, resistance and desire, and performativity) as analytical tools to interpret the small stories of daily life by asking: What kinds of tensions can be identified when children are included in and excluded from play situations? The research material comprises video recordings and observations from four preschools. The findings provide insights into the politics of belonging as constant movements between children positioned as insiders and outsiders. The processes of belonging and exclusion abound with tensions between stability and variability, including and excluding, and individuality and collectivity. The study reveals that materiality is not a neutral, power-free element of a particular setting, but, rather, an aspect of the politics of belonging.

Drawing on a Nordic action research project on values education, this chapter describes a developmental process in one Finnish preschool. The educators worked two years with researchers in order to promote the realisation of caring values and ended up with a practice called “armchair pedagogy”. Armchair pedagogy offers concrete means that enable embodying caring values, such as calming down and engaging in communicating with children, bodily closeness, genuine listening, reciprocity, and prioritising.

This article presents a study in which we began with a question ‘how to teach theoretical reflectivity in teacher education’, and ended with a sentence ‘there is theoretical diffraction in teacher education’. The research presented in this paper took place in the context of a university course in which we have been involved for the past two years. During the course we simultaneously aimed to teach theoretical reflection and to analyse what was happening as we taught theoretical reflection. For two years we asked: What are students doing while we are trying to engage them in theoretical reflection? We noted that students are engaged in theory, but not in ways easily readable to the educators, and that the process could be called theoretical diffraction rather than reflection. Theoretical diffraction during the course was patterned by existing discursive practices: (1) disciplining emotions and focusing on control and answers; (2) personalising school as the teacher, and personally defending it; and (3) prioritising practice over theory and seeing both as dogma.

OBJECTIVE—Our aim was to evaluate the predictive value of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), diabetes-associated autoantibodies, and other factors for development of clinical diabetes later in life. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—In this case-control study the presence of autoantibodies was studied in 435 women with GDM and in healthy matched control subjects. The need for exogenous insulin during GDM was recorded. In the GDM group, the mean follow-up period was 5.7 years and in the control group 6.1 years. RESULTS—Among the subjects with GDM, 20 (4.6%) developed type 1 diabetes and 23 (5.3%) developed type 2 diabetes, whereas none of the control subjects became diabetic. Two-thirds of those who developed type 1 diabetes tested positive initially for islet cell antibodies (ICAs), whereas 56% of them had autoantibodies to GAD (GADAs) and 38% to the protein tyrosine phosphatase–related IA-2 molecule. Only 2 of the 23 women who presented later with type 2 diabetes tested positive for autoantibodies. According to multivariate analysis, initial age ≤30 years, the need for insulin treatment for GDM, and antibody positivity for ICAs and GADAs were associated with increased risk for clinical type 1 diabetes. CONCLUSIONS—Pregnancy seems to identify women who are at risk of developing diabetes later in life. About 10% of Finnish women with GDM will develop diabetes over the next 6 years; nearly half of them develop type 1 diabetes and the other half type 2 diabetes. Age ≤30 years, the need for insulin treatment during pregnancy, and positivity for ICAs and GADAs confer a high risk of subsequent progression to type 1 diabetes in women affected by GDM.

The prevalence of polycystic ovaries (PCO) and clinical, endocrine, and metabolic features were investigated in women with previous gestational diabetes (GDM). Thirty-three women with a history of GDM and 48 controls were studied. Glucose and insulin secretion capacity was evaluated by means of the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), and insulin action was determined by means of a euglycemic insulin clamp. Compared with control women, women with previous GDM more often had significantly abnormal OGTT, a higher prevalence of PCO (39.4% vs. 16.7%; P = 0.03), higher serum concentrations of cortisol, dehydroepiandrosterone, and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate and a greater area under the glucose curve. Women with previous GDM showed a lowered early phase insulin response to glucose and impaired insulin sensitivity, which was accounted for mainly by decreased glucose nonoxidation. They also demonstrated a significantly lower fasting serum C peptide/insulin ratio than the controls, indicating that women with previous GDM have impaired hepatic insulin extraction, which tended to be more marked among women with PCO. This may explain why women with PCO and previous GDM were significantly more hyperinsulinemic than women with normal ovaries. In conclusion, our data demonstrate that women with previous GDM often have PCO and abnormal OGTT. They are insulin resistant as a result of lowered glucose nonoxidation and show inappropriately low insulin responses to glucose, reflecting impaired β-cell function. They also have higher adrenal androgen secretion, which may be associated with abdominal obesity.

ObjectiveTo investigate the connection between overweight and first-episode schizophrenia spectrum as well as non-schizophrenia spectrum psychiatric disorders in adolescent male and female drug-naïve psychiatric inpatients, whose illness was early onset.MethodThree hundred twenty-three adolescents with no past or present psychiatric medication, 12–17 years of age, admitted to the psychiatric inpatient care (Oulu University Hospital, Northern Finland) between April 2001 and March 2006. DSM-IV diagnoses were based on the “Schedule for Affective Disorder and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children Present and Lifetime” (K-SADS-PL). An adolescent was defined as overweight if his or her BMI was greater than or equal to the 85th percentile.ResultsOverweight values were highest in drug-naïve adolescent boys with first-episode schizophrenia spectrum (RR: 2.5, 95%CI: 1.08–4.29) and non-schizophrenia spectrum (RR: 2.80, 95%CI: 2.20–3.45) disorders. The RR in girls with non-schizophrenia spectrum disorders was 1.73 (95%CI: 1.31–2.23), but in those with first-episode schizophrenia spectrum disorders RR did not differ from general population.ConclusionsIn our study sample of first-episode schizophrenia spectrum drug-naïve adolescents, overweight was shown to be prevalent in all diagnostic groups other than first-episode schizophrenia spectrum psychotic girls. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study in which overweight was analyzed and verified among drug-naïve adolescent boys, suffering from first-episode schizophrenia spectrum disorder. To what extent our results are applicable to other regions and study groups, remains to be seen.

Our aim was to evaluate the predictive value of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), diabetes-associated autoantibodies, and other factors for development of clinical diabetes later in life.In this case-control study the presence of autoantibodies was studied in 435 women with GDM and in healthy matched control subjects. The need for exogenous insulin during GDM was recorded. In the GDM group, the mean follow-up period was 5.7 years and in the control group 6.1 years.Among the subjects with GDM, 20 (4.6%) developed type 1 diabetes and 23 (5.3%) developed type 2 diabetes, whereas none of the control subjects became diabetic. Two-thirds of those who developed type 1 diabetes tested positive initially for islet cell antibodies (ICAs), whereas 56% of them had autoantibodies to GAD (GADAs) and 38% to the protein tyrosine phosphatase-related IA-2 molecule. Only 2 of the 23 women who presented later with type 2 diabetes tested positive for autoantibodies. According to multivariate analysis, initial ageor =30 years, the need for insulin treatment for GDM, and antibody positivity for ICAs and GADAs were associated with increased risk for clinical type 1 diabetes.Pregnancy seems to identify women who are at risk of developing diabetes later in life. About 10% of Finnish women with GDM will develop diabetes over the next 6 years; nearly half of them develop type 1 diabetes and the other half type 2 diabetes. Ageor =30 years, the need for insulin treatment during pregnancy, and positivity for ICAs and GADAs confer a high risk of subsequent progression to type 1 diabetes in women affected by GDM.