ABSTRACT

Aalto, Iiris & Janhonen, Jaana. Towards equality in childhood education — Parents and employees opinions and experiences of Kuusikko group in Haukkamäki day-care center. 60 p., 2 appendices. Language: Finnish. Pieksämäki, Spring 2013.

Diaconia University of Applied Sciences. Degree Programme in Social Services + early childhood teacher qualification.

The objective of this thesis was to figure out how gender equality was fulfilled in early childhood education from the employees and the parents’ point of view and also how employees and parents work to promote gender equality in early childhood education. One main starting point for choosing this subject for the thesis was the opportunity to get a qualification to work as an early childhood teacher while doing the bachelor degree in social work.

The study is a qualitative and quantitative research. Research material was collected using questionnaires that were given to the employees of Kuusikko group in Haukkamäki day-care center and also for the parents of the children in this group. Questionnaires were given out 50 copies from which 20 (N=20) were returned, four (n=4) from the employees and 16 (16=n) from the parents. The analysis was made by dividing the answers into themes considering the objective of the research. The theme of employees was early childhood environment, action of the group and employee action. The theme of parents was early childhood environment, daily actions in early childhood and view of parenting. The answer was also loaded to the Microsoft Excel- spreadsheet.

The results of this thesis show that both the employees of the day-care center and children’s parents try to treat boys and girls the same way. However, when parents and employees judged their own behavior, both the employees and the parents pointed out that they’re giving more both positive and negative attention to boys than girls. Automatically girls are thought to be more independent in their actions. The employees use gender equal education methods and promote gender equality for example in supporting of friendships and doing games the way that girls and boys are in mixed-up groups. The results were similar to those in earlier studies. In the plan for early childhood education it is stated that gender equal education is a challenge but it can be supported by providing more education for the workers and improving cooperation with the parents. In the group Kuusikko gender equal early childhood education is not fulfilled in all senses.

From the results you can see that there is a big role in how the group of children is gathered in day-care centers when considering gender equal encounters. The experience of the employees is that when there are more boys in the group, the boys tend to get more attention and feedback than the girls. Consideration and the way and amount of talking were situations where gender equality was not carried out. In these situations the stereotype opinions of the adult were emphasized. The idea of who girls and boys are and what they are supposed to do is so strong that it’s hard to realize that these culturally made assumptions have become reality.

Keywords: Gender equality, early childhood education, gender, qualitative research, quantitative research.