Saija Tanhuanpää
University Teacher
University of Turku, Department of Teacher Education, Rauma camp saitan@utu.fi +358 29 450 3564 +358 50 524 3613 Seminaarinkatu 1 Rauma Office: Teknika 237b, Teacher Department, Rauma, tel. +358 40 593 6895 Reception time Tuesday on 9.00 - 10.00 a.m. ORCID identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8522-2734 |
Areas of expertise
Early Childhood Education, Special Education, Participation, International Child Development Programme
Early Childhood Education, Special Education, Participation, International Child Development Programme
Biography
My career as an Early Childhood Education teacher started already in 1981. One year later I started my ten-year lasting job as a chef in a Kindergarten. After my Special Education studies, I worked 17 years consulting Early Childhood Education teachers in the town of Rauma. I interrupted my special education teacher work for one year because I was establishing a Day Care Center to the neighbor municipality. After completing my Master´s degree I worked for two years in a national welfare project "Kaste" as a project planner. The purpose of that project was to develop psychosocial services to children under 18 years old in an area of four municipalities. In Rauma we succeed to develop a model of Family Center with a multi-professional group of professional workers in the area. The Family Center started to work three years after the project ended. During this project, my interest in children´s participation grew and I made my study plan to the University of Turku. Soon after the acceptance to the University, I got a place of a doctoral candidate. In another area in the welfare project
"Kaste", in Parainen, there was introduced International Child
Development Programme. I started to study the principles of ICDP and now
I´m an educated ICDP teacher. Now I´m working as a University Teacher. Half of my work is Special Education and working as a teacher tutor to the students. The other 50 % is the work of Project Manager in a project of InnoPlay (2019-2021) which is a project of the Ministry of Culture and Education. It concerns developing Craft and Technology Education and Digitalization. I have coordinated teacher collaboration between the University of Turku and the University of Namibia in the Department of Teacher Education (2018-2019) due to the voluntary work I have made with Namibian students at the same time. My mixed-methods study (monography) concerning children's´, teachers´, and parents´ participation in Kindergarten is waiting until I finish the InnoPlay project.
My career as an Early Childhood Education teacher started already in 1981. One year later I started my ten-year lasting job as a chef in a Kindergarten. After my Special Education studies, I worked 17 years consulting Early Childhood Education teachers in the town of Rauma. I interrupted my special education teacher work for one year because I was establishing a Day Care Center to the neighbor municipality. After completing my Master´s degree I worked for two years in a national welfare project "Kaste" as a project planner. The purpose of that project was to develop psychosocial services to children under 18 years old in an area of four municipalities. In Rauma we succeed to develop a model of Family Center with a multi-professional group of professional workers in the area. The Family Center started to work three years after the project ended. During this project, my interest in children´s participation grew and I made my study plan to the University of Turku. Soon after the acceptance to the University, I got a place of a doctoral candidate. In another area in the welfare project
"Kaste", in Parainen, there was introduced International Child
Development Programme. I started to study the principles of ICDP and now
I´m an educated ICDP teacher. Now I´m working as a University Teacher. Half of my work is Special Education and working as a teacher tutor to the students. The other 50 % is the work of Project Manager in a project of InnoPlay (2019-2021) which is a project of the Ministry of Culture and Education. It concerns developing Craft and Technology Education and Digitalization. I have coordinated teacher collaboration between the University of Turku and the University of Namibia in the Department of Teacher Education (2018-2019) due to the voluntary work I have made with Namibian students at the same time. My mixed-methods study (monography) concerning children's´, teachers´, and parents´ participation in Kindergarten is waiting until I finish the InnoPlay project.
Research
Participation (monography, coming), International Child Development Programme (one municipality in the south-western part of Finland), Special Education (students´ reflective thinking)
Participation (monography, coming), International Child Development Programme (one municipality in the south-western part of Finland), Special Education (students´ reflective thinking)
Teaching
Early Childhood Special Education, International Child Development Programme, Craft and Technology Education and Digitalization
Early Childhood Special Education, International Child Development Programme, Craft and Technology Education and Digitalization
Publications
- Knotworking — not working: Interprofessional collaboration and co-figuration of pre-service special education teachers (2023)
- Research Papers in Education
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Participatory teacher-child interaction in advancing teaching coding and robotics in pre-primary education (2023)
- Australasian journal of technology education
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Dimensions of Instructional Support in Teacher-Child Interaction in Teaching of Programming and Robotics to Young Learners (2022)
- PATT : proceedings
(A4 Refereed article in a conference publication ) - Outdoor Learning in Early Childhood Education : A Narrative Review (2021)
- Techne Series: Research in Sloyd Education and Craft Science A
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal)
UTU Research Portal