How educare integrates into the round-the-clock early childhood education and care?

Abstract

In current Finnish society there is an increasing number of parents working during irregular working hours as nonstandard shift workers, meanwhile, Finnish family types are becoming more diverse than before. This will bring new challenges and pressure in the flexibility of Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC) system. ECEC is usually implemented in daytime but many families need these services also in the evenings, nights and weekends. However, the area of round-the-clock ECEC is not widely studied and needs more attention because of its special nature. This thesis aims to discuss how to integrate the principles and objectives of Finnish ECEC into the round-the-clock early childhood education and care. The qualitative study was implemented by interviewing ECEC personnel and guardians, observing the current circumstances about children’s learning and development in a Finnish round-the-clock daycare center and analyzing the data and sources about relevant topics from documents, websites, government policy records, leaflets and meeting minutes. The solutions highlight the suggestions to Finnish authorities, ECEC service providers, ECEC professions and Children’s parents that the round-the-clock early childhood education and care must have the same high quality ECEC services with standard day care centers by integrating care, education and instruction as a whole, which is referred as the educare model. ECEC services must be better shaped to meet the multiple care and educational needs. ECEC personnel must obtain professional qualification and get continuing education to better support the children and their families. Learning in the mixed-age groups could be implemented systematically for the potential benefits by qualified ECEC educators. ECEC personnel would consider parents as ECEC pedagogical partner by more sharing their thoughts and practices with parents and involving parents more deeply regarding to their child’s caring and education.