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

: Teknika 237b, Teacher Department, Rauma, tel. +358 40 593 6895

Reception time Tuesday on 9.00 - 10.00 a.m.

: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8522-2734

Early Childhood Education, Special Education, Participation, International Child Development Programme

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.


Participation (monography, coming), International Child Development Programme (one municipality in the south-western part of Finland), Special Education (students´ reflective thinking)


Early Childhood Special Education, International Child Development Programme, Craft and Technology Education and Digitalization



Last updated on 2023-12-07 at 11:36