Exploring the narrative of a Finnish early childhood education teacher on her professional intercultural learning

Cultural diversity has been increasing in Finnish day care centres, implying the need for early childhood education teachers to learn how to meaningfully work with children and parents from different cultural backgrounds. This article focuses on describing the intercultural learning process as narr...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Katri Jokikokko, Hannele Karikoski
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Early Childhood Education Association Finland 2016-08-01
Series:Journal of Early Childhood Education Research
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journal.fi/jecer/article/view/114052
Description
Summary:Cultural diversity has been increasing in Finnish day care centres, implying the need for early childhood education teachers to learn how to meaningfully work with children and parents from different cultural backgrounds. This article focuses on describing the intercultural learning process as narrated by a Finnish early childhood education teacher, Tanja, who has worked for more than twenty years in a multicultural day care context. Tanja’s narrative focuses on her intercultural professional learning experiences that take place in the workplace. Early childhood education teachers’ intercultural learning processes have not been studied or theorized extensively. Therefore, there is a great need to research and discuss this topic, especially in the Finnish context. In Tanja’s case it seems that through her work experiences she has learnt to appreciate diversity more, has become more confident and has gained many practical competences for encountering diversity in a positive way. However, it seems that as there has not been an opportunity to reflect her experiences formally, she lacks the conceptual tools and ability to critically analyse various practices and values of the day care centre.
ISSN:2323-7414