Culturally and linguistically diverse children's participation and social roles in the Finnish Early Childhood Education – is play the common key?

: Outi Arvola, Kaisa Pankakoski, Jyrki Reunamo, Minna Kyttälä

Publisher: ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD

: 2020

: Early Child Development and Care

: EARLY CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND CARE

: EARLY CHILD DEV CARE

: 13

: 0300-4430

: 1476-8275

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2020.1716744

Children with non-Finnish cultural or linguistic background face challenges to interact socially in the early childhood education (ECE) context in Finland. The present study aims to clarify (1) what kind of social roles children typically have in ECE, and (2) what sort of activities and play are typical to children with Finnish and non-Finnish cultural or linguistic background. The research data is systematically sampled large-scale observation data (1147 children, 22,149 observations) of 5-6-year-old children. According to our findings, non-social roles and less participative actions were found to be more common amongst diverse background children than with Finnish background children. Children with diverse background were found to be more involved especially in rule play but they were less participative in role play. The results suggest that ECE educators could pay specific attention to play-based interventions and to the shared cultural creation.