The present study explored pre-primary students' investigative activity during a longitudinal, integrative technology education project: the Power Creatures project. Investigative activity refers to the way young children act in a learning context that combines inquiry-based activities with creative hands-on activities, such as designing and…

Connected learning is claimed to support children to connect their formal learning with wider social network and media tools in an interest-driven and inquiry-oriented manner. In a formal context there are few successful implementations of connected learning. This study explores how a kindergarten community of 8 adults and 42 children, equipped…

In this article we explore the realisation of an art education project as multiprofessional cooperation. The multiprofessional collaboration pair in this study consisted of an artist working together with a teacher. This resulted in activities, which all actors, artists, teachers and administrators saw to be at an especially high level, both…

Every preschool age child in Finland has the right to day care and the expertise of educators is multidimensional. The aim of this article is to clarify the expertise of those early childhood educators, who have the competence of kindergarten teachers (n = 80). The data consisted of the early educators' stories of their growth towards expertise.…

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…

The studies in this volume explore a number of issues in education today. One paper reveals what actually motivates teachers to develop their career, another, how to teach primary teachers to talk about visual art. Children's artworks were explored in one article to see how they relate to their adjustment to school. In another, a case study was…

This article reports on a retrospective study of Finnish pre-service elementary teachers' assessments of their musical experiences in nursery school and elementary and secondary school and real-time study of their experiences in teacher training. The participants (N = 590) had received musical instruction in five age groups (4-6 years, 7-12 years,…

Describes preschool education as it is integrated into the day care system in Finland. Discusses founding of first Finnish kindergartens, growing need for more extensive day care, the current municipal day care system, the Day Care Act guaranteeing the subjective right to day care for all children under age 7, and the educational role of day care.…

Recent approaches in the study of learning describe it as an interactive process. Learning is seen to take place in the participation framework, between the person and his or her environment, rather than in the individual mind. This study examined the construction and development of expertise as a situational and contextual process, with the…

This report is presented in three parts. Part 1 consists of synopses of the child care situation in 13 countries. For each country, the child care environment, including the philosophy and historical background of child care, appropriate legislation, and types of child care services provided, are discussed. School-age child care programs for…

This Information Bulletin contains an introduction and three articles on preschool education. The introduction notes the unsolved problem of providing care outside the home for children below the school age of seven, day care and preschool education being the alternatives considered. The first article "Pre-school Education in Finland"…