A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book
Practices/3, Finland: A Collective Method of Early Childhood Self-Determination
Authors: Leif Rosqvist, Jarmo Kinos
Editors: Federico Farini, Angela Scollan
Edition: 1
Publication year: 2019
Book title : Children’s Self-determination in the Context of Early Childhood Education and Services. Discourses, Policies and Practices
Series title: International Perspectives on Early Childhood Education and Development
Volume: 25
First page : 51
Last page: 62
Number of pages: 284
ISBN: 978-3-030-14555-2
eISBN: 978-3-030-14556-9
ISSN: 2468-8746
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14556-9_4
Web address : https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030145552
This chapter is concerned with a Finnish all-inclusive
elementary and preschool project (from ages 5 to 13) of assessing and improving
indoor facilities of two schools. For the collective method of participation,
emotional symbols -based markers were used around the facilities to signify a
place as comfortable and cosy, scary and dangerous, noisy and restless,
beautiful or ugly. Subsequent small-collective directed conversations, and
ultimately, collective decision-making followed. Our case is focused on the
preschool-attending (at the ages from 5 to 7) participants from the group of
special need, with a tradition of participatory methods.
With help of ethnographic methods (teacher interviews,
documentary reviews) we assess and reflect on the participatory project using
theories of democratic
procedures as well as our work on child-initiated pedagogies. Despite potential
shortcomings of the approach, the case can be argued to reflect a genuine
self-determined participation of preschool aged children with a special need.
