The study presented in this article is part of a larger study called Progressive Feedback (blogs.helsinki.fi/orientate), which is an early childhood education and care (ECEC) research and development project. The aim of this article is to find out: (1) how children's tested creative thinking abilities, fluency, originality and imagination…

In early childhood education, the concept of distributed leadership has emerged as a key analytical tool for understanding leadership as well as a normative guide for what leadership should be. The concept originates in Peter Gronn's work, where it is positioned as overcoming the structure-agency debate, which is a foundational question in the…

Children's stress in day care is related to the stressful qualities of the environment and to children's orientations in that environment. The study involved 55 children in five day centres in Finland. Baseline saliva samples for measuring cortisol (stress) levels were collected five times during the day. Children were interviewed to measure their…