Children’s participation in Finnish pre-school education - Identifying, Describing and Documenting Children’s Participation

Abstract

This article describes, analyzes, and evaluates children’s participatory in Finnish pre-school groups. Children’s participation is viewed in the context of the Core Curriculum for Pre-school Education in Finland (2010), in which children are considered active subjects, who interact with both other people and the environment. However, in practical data, collected via survey from pre-school educators, this ideology is restricted and the educators in pre-school groups focus on children’s participation from a narrow point of view that reflects a lack of connection between the Core Curriculum goals for pre-school education and the actual participatory practices children face.

Keywords

• Pre-school
• Early childhood education
• Core Curriculum
• Participation
• Pedagogy