Päivi Pihlaja

A pilot longitudinal follow-up study of the Brief Infant Toddler Social-Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) in Northern Finland: examining toddlers' social-emotional, behavioural and communicative development

Developmental needs should be assessed in early infancy and followed longitudinally to improve identification, prevention and intervention efforts.The objective was to examine the relationship between competencies and areas of need in toddlers’ development, and to describe the properties and utility of the Brief Infant Toddler Social–Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) in a pilot study in Northern Finland. Parents (N = 50) evaluated toddler development at 18 and 36 months. Assessments included the BITSEA, the Child Behavior Checklist and the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. Lower communicative skills were associated with an increase in toddler behavioural problems. Social–emotional competence (S-EC) was associated with better communication development. Parents reporting enhanced communication skills and S-EC in their toddlers also reported fewer behavioural problems in their young children; however, further research employing the BITSEA in a larger and heterogeneous sample of Finnish children is needed to determine appropriate cut-off scores and reliability especially for the unique subscales of BITSEA.

Value-creating E-Government business Models for Early childhood Education in Finland

In many cases, e-government is considered a name for transforming informative public services into electronic mode, although the focus of e-government should be on creating value for citizens as well as public organizations. In this article we apply Amit and Zott’s (2001) e-business value creation methods to an egovernment environment, namely early childhood education in Finland. The objective of the collaborative action research study was to find out what kind of business models in e-government would create value for citizens. The methodological result based on the collaborative nature of the study is a method for analyzing and generating business models. Amit & Zott’s framework also seems to be applicable to the e-government environment, and we were able to draw many viable business models for early childhood education, which forms the practical contribution of the study.

How Do Day-Care Personnel Describe Children with Challenging Behaviour?

In educational contexts there are few topics that receive as much attention from adults as childrens behaviour that is seen as challenging. Challenging behaviour has been a topic in many disciplines, such as education, child psychiatry, psychology and special education. Along with the definition of challenging behaviour, we can read about social and emotional difficulties or disruptive behaviour. In this article we examine the definitions of challenging behaviour in Finnish day care. Altogether 291 professionals answered an open-ended question. The results show a wide range of individually defined meanings where the focus is mostly on children in a problem-oriented way.

Teachers’ perceptions of their personal early childhood special education competence in day care

The purpose of this study is to examine and compare kindergarten and special kindergarten teachers’ perceptions of their own competence in early childhood special education (ECSE) in Finnish day care. This comparison is based on the kindergarten teachers’ and special kindergarten teachers’ self-evaluation. Teachers evaluated their theoretical and practical ECSE competence. The research questionnaire consisted of six ECSE working areas. The aim of this study is to integrate theory and practice, and participation in expert culture by bringing educational research and practical education closer to each other. The results reported here imply that the respondents evaluate their theoretical and practical ECSE competence to be better than moderate; the test reliability was quite high. Special kindergarten teachers assess their knowledge competence more highly than kindergarten teachers. Teachers ranked their practical competence higher than their theoretical competence.

‘Behave yourself!’ Examining meanings assigned to children with socio‐emotional difficulties

Day‐care, the context of this research, is a significant service in Finland because every child under compulsory school age (7 years) has the right to municipal day‐care once the parental allowance period ends. Finnish day‐care is generally organised by municipalities as part of the social services. It is inclusive by nature, as there are no separate kindergartens with only special needs children. Such children are mostly in ordinary groups; only 1% are in special groups. Children with socio‐emotional difficulties have been a challenge for the Finnish day‐care and comprehensive school system for decades. In both educational systems such children are experienced as problems. This article deals with the discourse of day‐care personnel about these children and examines the meanings behind this language.

Enhancing peer interaction during guided play in Finnish integrated special groups

ABSTRACT This article focused on the pedagogy that enhances peer interaction in integrated special groups. In Finland, most children identified as having special educational needs (SEN) attend day-care in mainstream kindergarten groups; the rest are in integrated or segregated early childhood special education (ECSE) groups in public day-care centres [National Institute of Health and Welfare. 2013. “Child Day Care 2013 – Municipal Survey.” Accessed March 15, 2016. https://www.julkari.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/116231/Tr16_14.pdf?sequence=4]. An integrated group, which typically consists of seven children without and five with SEN, is supposed to be an inclusive environment that provides an atmosphere in which every child can feel togetherness and be scaffolded [Pihlaja, P. 2009. “Erityisen tuen käytännöt varhaiskasvatuksessa – näkökulmana inkluusio.” [The Special Education Practices in Early Childhood Education – Inclusion as Viewpoint.] Kasvatus 2: 146–156]. Our aim was to examine how ECSE professionals’ pedagogical practices were used to enhance peer interaction in interactive play. We analysed 14 videotaped sessions of guided play and conceptualized the studied phenomenon by portraying five guidance types in which the identified pedagogical practices were used in different ways.

Parental Involvement in Finnish Day Care--What Do Early Childhood Educators Say?.

ABSTRACT Research conducted in recent decades shows that parental involvement (PI) plays a significant role in the academic achievement and the healthy development of children. Gaining a better understanding of early childhood educators’ views and the reasons for insufficient practices is important for improving PI. This mixed-method research investigates the views on PI held by early childhood educators in Finland. A representative sample of 287 educators from Helsinki completed a questionnaire which provided quantitative data and qualitative material. The results show that Finnish early childhood educators have positive attitudes towards PI and its various types in general. Learning at home is the most popular type of PI. The participants state that difficulties in PI are often caused by poor parental motivation and a lack of time on the part of both educators and parents.

Formal and informal sources of paternal support in early parenthood

ABSTRACT Extra-familial support has been proven to be an important resource for families during early parenthood, but little attention has been paid to what supports should be available for fathers specifically and how fathers perceive different sources of support during early parenthood in the twenty-first century. This study examined Finnish fathers’ (N = 1069) regarding the following topics: (a) the support sources perceived as primary by the fathers and (b) the association between the father’s socio-economic status (SES) and his overall need for extra-familial support and (c) the association between the father’s SES, family structure and the perceived level of instrumental support sources available for parenting and childcare tasks. Most of the fathers’ perceptions highlight the role played by informal support sources in providing assistance for parenting and childcare. The results of binary logistic regression suggest that fathers of lower SES are more likely to have an increased need for extra-familial support.

Service quality of Early Childhood Education web portals in Finnish municipalities

Increasing number of governmental organizations have transformed material on their web sites as a way of providing users with information about their products and services. In this paper, we apply Yang et al (2005) instrument for analyzing municipal early childhood education (ECE) web sites in Finland. The objective of the study was to find out the quality of ECE web portals as well as to give hints to improve their value from users’ point of view. In general the five dimensions, usability, usefulness of content, adequacy of information, accessibility, and interaction, of the Yang et al model seems to be applicable also in the early childhood education environment.