Authors

• Kekkonen, Marjatta (National Institute for Health and Welfare)

Keywords

child care, child day care, child-minders, children, day nurseries, early childhood

Abstract

The data consist of transcribed group discussions as well as individual and peer interviews of early childhood educators in Finland, spanning two years. The respondents were early childhood educators who had participated in educational partnership training and a development project for educational partnership organized by STAKES (National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health).

The individual interviews had two themes; educational partnership as a concept and practice, and the educational partnership training organized by STAKES. The group discussions, which were recorded in the meetings of a coaching group of seven people, focused on the partnership between the educators and parents as well as the partnership between the educators themselves. The peer interviews were done in pairs between the educators, based on interview questions received, without the researcher being present. These interviews charted opinions on educational partnership, influence of 'partnership thinking' on work practices, the notion of good education/day care for children, and challenges in educational partnership.

Background information included the interviewee's job title, year of birth, number of years worked in daycare, and the age group of children they worked with.

The dataset is only available in Finnish.