Research focus and goals
Members of this research group are interested in questions related to childhood, early childhood education and care (ECEC), child development, and ECEC institutions situated in different societies. The group explores childhood, children’s lives and professional´s work as shaped by different relations, such as institutional, generational, discursive or material. Projects focusing on ECEC explore the politics, policies and changing systemic provision of ECEC, and transformations related to professional and pedagogical work; relations between different environments of children; and social, cultural and everyday spaces of ECEC, and inequality and difference.
The research focus in this group are further divided in to three subthemes:
1. Governance and everyday practices of ECEC (Theme leader: Maiju Paananen)
Both from an institutional point of view and from a child perspective, projects in this theme explore changing translocal, national and political processes shaping ECEC institutions, including politics and ECEC policies and their role in the everyday lives of children and their families.
2. Professionalism as relational practice (Theme leader: Päivi Kupila)
In this subtheme professionalism is explored as part of change within changing sociopolitical, cultural and workplace contexts in particular by focusing on issues of mentoring, identities, multi-professional collaboration and reflexive pedagogies.
3. Child development and diverse needs in early years (Theme leader: Mari Saha)
This sub-theme aims to generate interdisciplinary research-based evidence on child development and diverse needs in early years, and to gain knowledge on how different environments (e.g. home, kindergarten) and interaction (e.g., with adults and peers) affect children’s developmental outcomes and individual differences in inclusive ECE. This sub-theme is linked with other themes of ECEPP to enhance understanding of the dynamic relations across levels: interconnected nature of children’s development, micro-level practices, policies and governance of ECE.