Satu Uusiautti

The Ability to Love – a Virtue-Based Approach

Abraham Maslow (1954) was amazed of the scarcity of research on love. According to Maslow (1954, p. 235), it was surprising how little empiric sciences had to offer to the theme. Especially weird in his opinion was the silence of psychologists because studying love should have been their special responsibility. Maslow thought that the situation possibly originated in academic researchers’ besetting sin: they would rather do what is easy than what is necessary. Research on love and emotions has been taken with suspicious and even the facts that people behave in relation to other people and that people live in the net of human relationships from birth to death have not furthered the research (Berscheid, 2006).

How do the Finnish family policy and early education system support the well-being, happiness, and success of families and children?

What is childhood like in Finland? What kind of practical solutions have been created and evaluated – as well as those under development – that aim at both providing good childhood experiences and supporting children’s positive development? What practices aim to prevent exclusion from regular education and social experiences and to foster children’s healthy development in emotional, social, and behavioural terms? This issue consists of 12 articles that address aspects of research and practice concerning children under the age of 10, including their growth and development, the organisation of learning and teaching, and practices of rearing and child care in Finland. Authors represent a variety of universities and subdisciplines of the science of education. Reports are organised within the following strands: (1) the realisation and evaluation of early childhood education; (2) perspectives on children’s well-being; and (3) special viewpoints to early childhood education, care, and research in Finland. In order to give international readers an insight of the situation in Finland, we will next provide an introduction about the Finnish family policy and educational system.

Many Faces of Love

What do we actually talk about when we talk about love? Research on love and emotions has been met with suspicion although people live in a network of relationships from birth to death, and the ability to build and maintain relationships is an important strength. This book provides a comprehensive research-based analysis of love in human life: romantic love and its ups and downs, and the fascination of love, the combination of work and family, the secrets of a long-lasting marriage, senior love, and the throes and relief of a divorce. Love is also discussed in relation to other phenomena, such as friendship, play, and creativity. In addition, themes of parental love and pedagogical love, and the ability to love, as well as dark sides of love are introduced.

Teacher Education Curricula after the Bologna Process – a Comparative Analysis of Written Curricula in Finland and Estonia

During the Bologna process, from 2003 to 2006, degree programmes, including teacher education curricula, were developed in line with the two-tier system – the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) and modularization. The purpose of the present study is to contribute to the development of teacher education profiling measures by comparing the Finnish and Estonian curricula covering initial teacher education. The aim was to analyze and compare studies in the science of education as part of the class teacher education programs through the development of a sufficiently universal meta-structure. The written curricula were subjected to discipline-based content analysis, which covered the main elements of the curricula and the contents of the theoretical substance studies in the science of education. The resulting differences and similarities between the Finnish and the Estonian curricula are reported.

Parental Love—Irreplaceable for Children’s Well-being

Child rearing has become more and more challenging during the past few decades and increasingly greater expectations are leveled at educators and parents. There has been a dramatic decrease in the traditional families while the proportion of single-parent families has increased (e.g. Sheridan & Burt, 2009). As the worldwide statistic show, number of working mothers of young children has risen over the past few decades, so has the use of child care (Ebbeck & Hoi Yin, 2009).

Experts or good educators – or both? The development of early childhood educators’ expertise in Finland

Well-educated staff consists of multidimensional experts, and this staff is one of the strengths of the Finnish day-care system. The aim of this article is to clarify the development of the expertise of those early childhood educators who have qualified as kindergarten teachers. The data consisted of the early educators’ stories (n = 80) of their growth towards expertise. The analysis was carried out as content analysis. As the results, four key factors in the process of growth towards expertise were created. According to the informants, personal life history, education, work experience and personal attitudes towards work had been the most influential factors in the process of growth towards their expertise. The working environment both facilitated and hindered the growth of the expert. It is possible to foster educators’ professional growth with an individual development plan.

Who is the One? The Difficulty in Selecting the Partner

Partner selection and the arousal of love have interested poets, artists, and authors already for millenniums. The process of partner selection—“mate selection”, “mate seeking”, “spouse selection”, or “marital choice”—has proven quite an interesting research target especially in the United States (Hatfield, Benson, & Rapson, 2012). Research has often been relatively narrow studies with small data but they have presented various theories to explain the start of a new relationship.

Silence is Not Golden: Review of Studies of Couple Interaction

Couple interaction and dialogue make up the most important pillars of a functional relationship. In this article, the vast body of research between the 1970s and 2010s was reviewed. The role of couple interaction in long-lasting relationships was dissected through this literature meta-analysis, which was categorized into three perspectives: the level, content, and accuracy of interaction. The core question was how happy and unhappy couples differ in their communication skills and habits. A general view of positive couple interaction was built and discussed. Communication skills and self-disclosure appeared the key factors in the positive development of a romantic relationship.

Seven Rules on Having a Happy Marriage Along With Work

In modern society, men and women want to have a successful marriage and a career. However, people are faced with new demands at work and home, and therefore, finding a balance between work and family life is a real challenge. In this article, the data consist of stories written by Finns who have been married for more than 10 years (N = 342 married couples) and who were able to combine demanding work and family lives. In voluntary statements, the respondents discussed the factors that explain the stability and happiness of their marriages. Stories were analyzed with inductive content analysis and qualitative categorizing. Seven rules of personal behavior as the resolutions of having a good marriage along with work were found as results. The results show that none of the couples had avoided difficulties; instead, the couples had created personal models of interaction that could be seen as the secret of their marital success.

Going to school with narcolepsy – perceptions of families and teachers of children with narcolepsy

In 2009 and 2010, a large group of Finnish children and adolescents got narcolepsy after the vaccination campaign to prevent swine flu pandemic. A sample of children and adolescents who had gotten narcolepsy after 2009 participated in this study. The purpose of this research was to analyse how narcolepsy that developed from the swine flu vaccination had influenced the school going, school work, and its fluency of six elementary school pupils, and how useful the support provided was perceived. Furthermore, it was studied what kind of a learning environment school provides to children with narcolepsy. The realisation of the operative curriculum was also discussed through the point of view of tripartite support and segregation of learning. According to the results, especially the beginning of the illness, symptoms had been severe among the participants, which had challenged all their activities and environments. All of them had had difficulties at school because of narcolepsy. The possibilities of moulding these childrens learning environments are discussed.