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Background: This is a descriptive study of children's participation plans in early childhood education (ECE) settings in Finland. The study adopted a multidimensional approach to find out how practices of children's participation were conceived in pedagogical plans made by ECE staff, representing a focus that is rare in the existing body of research. Aim: Aim of the study was to investigate educators' commitments to enhancing children's participation in pedagogical practices in their ECE settings. Setting: Ten centre-based plans for children's participation composed by ECE staff at ECE centres were selected for the document data in this study. Methods: This study employs the categorisation of the prerequisites and dimensions of children's participation in deductive qualitative content analysis (Turja 2017). Results: Results of the analysis concludes that in early childhood education plans, there were comprehensive notions of prerequisites for participation. However, the study indicates that the level of participation varied between plans for different activities; it was highest in play and limited in terms of time and effect in other pedagogical and caregiving activities. Conclusion: Understanding the prerequisites and dimensions of children's participation is fundamental for planning and enacting participative pedagogy in child groups at ECE centres. In conclusion, this study suggests how to support ECE staff in interpreting and implementing children's participation in early childhood education.

In flexibly scheduled early childhood education and care (ECEC), the timing of care depends on parents' non-standard working hours. Multiple individual schedules and care times in a child group may cause irregularity in a child's daily structures, and a child may miss a standard hour's activities that are led by teachers with a pedagogical education. In this context, the significance and definition of pedagogy is vague and tensional. This study aimed at disclosing discursive tensions related to pedagogy in flexibly scheduled ECEC constructed in interviews by Finnish teachers and childcare nurses (n = 31). The analysis of the interview data followed the principles of discursive psychology. Consequently, three discursive tensions related to pedagogy were found: (1) children's right to learn vs. their need for care, (2) educators' educational background vs. personal strengths as a standpoint for pedagogical work and (3) pedagogy as standardised vs. meeting children's individual needs. As an implication, it appears problematic if we consider education and care as opposites. Instead, they should be viewed from a holistic pedagogical perspective, as each child has the right to high-quality pedagogy despite the timing of care. Moreover, children's individuality should be at the core of planning pedagogical activities.

This study investigated the use of a playful, narrative, vignette-based method, called Story Magician's Play Time (SMPT), in supporting children's social-emotional reasoning and in helping children practice their social skills. We set out to examine (a) in what ways children use SMPT sessions to explore social interaction situations and to practice social skills, and (b) what story content and narrative play behavior during the SMPT sessions reveal about the social-emotional competence of children, in terms of acquisition and performance skills. The data were collected during SMPT storytelling sessions where 5- to 6-year-old children narrated stories of familiar but challenging daily situations and enacted their story in play. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The results suggest that the children had knowledge of socially responsible behaviors, but that they also had difficulties executing these behaviors in play. SMPT enabled the children to participate, experiment, and reflect on the emotions and strategies needed for developing socially sustainable solutions.

This study focuses on flexibly scheduled early childhood education and care (ECEC), an institutional childcare service for Finnish families where both parents, or a single parent, work non-standard hours. Although many countries nowadays offer extended hours day care, only Finland has a publicly provided, law-based system guaranteeing ECEC during non-standard as well as standard hours. We explore, drawing on parental survey data, what kinds of families use such services and when. Furthermore, we utilise web-survey data obtained from early educators to find out what they report as the main challenges involved in implementing flexibly scheduled ECEC. The results showed that single-parent families and lower educated parents were over-represented among the families using flexibly scheduled ECEC. The unpredictability of working-life tends to spill over to ECEC. Due to varying parental work schedules, children have unique daily and weekly rhythms, which in turn impact on administration, pedagogical issues and meeting children's needs.

This article explores accounts given by Finnish educators (n = 31) on the topic of flexibly scheduled early childhood education and care (i.e. childcare provided during non-standard as well as standard hours). Previous research has shown this to be a sensitive topic because of the contradiction between what is deemed in the interests of children and the fact of providing childcare during non-standard hours. The research follows the principles of discursive psychology. Educators' accounts were labelled as excusing, compensating, normalising and justifying. Accounts categorised as excusing and compensating shared concern over the effects of childcare during non-standard hours on children's well-being. Similar risks were not expressed in the normalising and the justifying accounts. Accounts differed as to who was held responsible for providing this type of childcare. When the responsibility was attributed to society, the educators' position was weaker than when they constructed themselves as active participants. Both educators and children were uniquely positioned in each type of account. As accounts have consequences for actions, it is important to make them visible both to understand and to develop practices in flexibly scheduled early childhood education and care.

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the analysis of the Early Childhood Education (ECE) curriculum in six countries involved in the UPDATE-project, and on that basis, propose a conceptual foundation for technology education in ECE that aims to enhance gender sensitive technology education in the continuum from early years to adulthood. The existing ECE curricula in the participating countries were analysed according to the general pedagogical approach as well as the contents specific to technology education. In many cases technology education was presented generally or implicitly, embedded in various curriculum content areas, and the existing curricula did not offer much support for teachers to figure out the nature, aims and pedagogical means of early childhood technology education. The comparison of the curricula raised some common key-issues which are important to construe more theoretically. In consequence, the article also focuses on the contemporary view of child-centred pedagogy and the conceptualisation of technology education fitting into the scope of ECE. Play is highlighted as a fundamental way of learning seldom studied in the context of technology education. In addition, a gender perspective on technology education deals with equal possibilities of both sexes to acquire knowledge, abilities and attitudes needed in technological agency.

Societal conditions impacting on parenting have radically changed during the past two decades. There is variation between and within societies depending on social, cultural, political and economic factors. Today, Early Childhood and Care (ECEC) services play an increasingly important role in supporting families with young children during birth to the age of compulsory education. Accordingly, the collaboration between families and early childhood professionals has emerged as an essential topic of educational research and professional development. The International Parent-Professional Partnerships (IPP) research study focuses on the contemporary challenges of the parent-teacher partnerships in early childhood education from a cross-cultural perspective. The purpose of the research is to examine parent-teacher partnerships in ECEC services in Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Norway and Portugal by looking into the national contexts and comparing these findings with each other. The research utilises both quantitative and qualitative analysis of survey data collected in the participating countries. The survey questionnaire focuses on teachers' views of parents' involvement in ECEC centres. The results show that there are differences in teachers' approaches to parent-teacher partnerships between societies as well as within each country. Parents also differ in their capacity to develop and maintain partnerships with teachers. It seems that there are differences in the professional status of the teachers in each country, which are, in turn, connected to the parents' role in the parent-teacher partnerships in ECEC services. This study aims to deepen the understanding of the nature of parent-teacher partnerships in contemporary contexts of early childhood education through cross-cultural research, and to enhance the training and professional development of early childhood professionals. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.)

The discussion around children's digital game culture has resulted in two contradictory images of children: the passive, antisocial children uncritically and mechanically consuming digital game content and the active, social children creatively using and interacting with digital game content. Our aim is to examine how these seemingly contradictory ideas of "active" and "passive" children could be considered. By means of empirical examples of children playing digital dress-up and makeover games, we will point out that for the successful use of these concepts, they need to be thoroughly contextualized. By discussing the context and referent of activity and passivity, it is possible to overcome the unnecessary polarization of the discourses on children's digital game culture. If the purpose is to advance the multidisciplinary discussion on digital games and childhood, the naive or careless use of the concepts of activity and passivity should be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]