Kasvatuskumppanuus puheena : Varhaiskasvattajat, vanhemmat ja lapset päivähoidon diskursiivisilla näyttämöillä

Abstract

Marjatta Kekkosen väitöskirjatutkimuksessa Kasvatuskumppanuus puheena -Varhaiskasvattajat, vanhemmat ja lapset päivähoidon diskursiivisilla näyttämöillä kuvataan millaisia puhetapoja käyttäen varhaiskasvatuksen ammattilaiset rakentavat kasvatuskumppanuutta koskevia merkityksiä. Varhaiskasvattajien tulkinnat kumppanuudesta liittyvät henkilöstön, vanhempien ja lasten välisiin kohtaamisiin päiväkodissa, lapsen kotona ja lähiympäristöissä. Tutkimus on ajankohtainen, sillä vanhempien ja päivähoidon henkilöstön välinen kasvatusyhteistyö linjattiin kasvatuskumppanuudeksi Varhaiskasvatuksen valtakunnallisissa linjauksissa vuonna 2003. Suomessa on tehty niukasti tutkimusta kasvatuskumppanuudesta varhaiskasvattajien itsensä tulkitsemana sekä lapsen päivähoitoon siirtymisen tukemisena. Kasvatuskumppanuus puheena tutkimus vastaa tähän. Tutkimuksen tulosten mukaan kasvatuskumppanuus käsitteenä ja puhetapana tulkittiin suhteita luovaksi kommunikaatioksi, varhaiskasvatuksen palveluneuvotteluksi, varhaiskasvatuksen kotikäynniksi sekä ammatilliseksi sosiaaliseksi suhteeksi. Suhteita luovassa kommunikaatiossa merkitykselliseksi tulkittiin lapsen, kasvattajan ja vanhemman yhteistyö- ja kiintymyssuhteiden tietoinen rakentaminen, suhteisiin sitoutuminen ja suhteissa toimiminen. Kasvatuskumppanuus palveluneuvotteluina edellytti dialogista, yhteistyösuhteen prosessimaista kehittymistä ja vanhempien omaa osallisuutta vahvistavia puhekäytäntöjä, toisin kuin perinteisemmät tavat, joissa päivähoito toimi perheen puolesta tietäjänä tai joissa perhe otti omasta puolestaan tietäjän roolit lapsen varhaiskasvatusta koskevissa ratkaisuissa. Kasvatuskumppanuutta rakentaviksi käytännöiksi tulkittiin lapsen kotiin tehtävä aloituskotikäynti ja aloituskeskustelu, jotka nähtiin osana varhaiskasvatuksen pedagogista perustehtävää. Kasvatuskumppanuus suhdekäsitteenä rajattiin ammatilliseksi, lapsen varhaiskasvatukseen ankkuroituvaksi sosiaaliseksi suhteeksi, joka on syytä erottaa vanhempien ja kasvattajien välille mahdollisesti rakentuvista muista , ei-ammatillisista ystävyys-, vertais- ja läheissuhteiden kaltaisista sosiaalisista suhteista. Tutkimus perustuu sosiaaliseen konstruktionismiin ja diskurssianalyysiin, jossa oletetaan, että todellisuus rakentuu merkitysten pohjalta. Kasvatuskumppanuuden oletetaan siten rakentuvan osapuolten välisissä keskusteluissa ja kohtaamisissa, jossa aikuisten ja lasten tavalla puhua ja käyttää kieltä on keskeinen merkitys. Tutkimuksen analyyttisenä työkaluna käytettiin diskursiivista näyttämöä, joka havainnollistaa sitä, miten kasvattajien, vanhempien ja lasten välinen vuorovaikutus, toimijuudet ja suhteet vaihtelevat kohtaamisissa päiväkodissa, lapsen kotona ja näiden lähiympäristössä sekä minkälainen sosiaalinen koreografia eli käsikirjoitus näitä kohtaamisia ohjaa. Tutkimusaineisto koostuu varhaiskasvattajien aloitushaastatteluista, ryhmäkeskusteluista ja vertaishaastatteluista, jotka on kerätty vuosina 2004 -2006. Tutkimus osoittaa, että kasvatuskumppanuudessa on kyse varhaiskasvatuksen ja perheen välisen kasvatusyhteistyön ja päivähoitopalvelujen toimintakäytäntöjen kulttuurisesta muutoksesta. Kumppaneina toimivat vanhemmat ja varhaiskasvattajat tuottavat lapsen varhaisvuosien kasvatusta koskevaa tietoa vaiheittain etenevässä yhteistyöprosessissa, jonka aloitusvaiheessa perheen kanssa käydään palveluneuvottelu, aloituskeskustelu ja varhaiskasvatuksen kotikäynti. Vanhempien ja ammattilaisten tasavertaisuutta ja sitoutuneisuutta edistetään kumppanuudessa dialogisuuden, neuvottelevuuden, sopimuksellisuuden ja suhteita luovan kommunikaation keinoin. Kumppanuustyöskentelyn ytimeksi nousee lapsen oman toimijuuden vahvistaminen sekä lapsen kuulluksi ja nähdyksi tuleminen sekä kodin että päiväkodin kehitysympäristöissä. Kasvatuskumppanuus merkitsee varhaiskasvatuksen kasvatusasiantuntijuuden yhteiskunnallisen merkityksen vahvistumista ja kasvattajien lapsiryhmissä kehittyvän kasvatusosaamisen tuomista aikaisempaa avoimemmin ja läpinäkyvämmin perheiden ja vanhempien käyttöön.Educational partnership in talk as action practitioners, parents and children on the discoursive stages of day-care The purpose of this study is to describe the discourse that early childhood education practitioners use to construct meanings related to educational partnerships. Interest in the study focuses on the types of agencies, interactions and relationships that early childhood education practitioners generate in accounts of encounters between teachers, parents and children. The study analyses the way in which practitioners account for meetings, encounters and co-operation between teachers, parents and children in the day-care center, the home and the surrounding environment. The aim is to clarify what interpretations of co-operation can be identified as educational partnership. In Finland, the co-operation between practitioners and parents has been defined as an educational partnership in the National Policy Definition on Early Childhood Education and Care (2002) and as ECEC partnership in the National Curriculum Guidelines on Early Childhood Education and Care in Finland (2003). According to the Child Care Act (36/1973), one of the duties of day care is to support parents efforts to raise and take care of their children. The study explicates what kind of interpretative repertoires of co-operation between parents and practitioners can be identified as educational partnership. The research is grounded in social constructionism and discourse analysis, both of which assume that people construct their own versions of reality and meanings in talk as action. The study puts forward the hypothesis that social reality and knowledge pertaining to it are constructed in interaction between people, and that language and discourse play a crucial part in this construction process. Language is understood as a form of action or talk as action. On a discoursive stage, the discourse on educational partnership takes on a tangible form in social action, where those practitioners, parents and children who are present on the stage construct situation-specific meanings for their encounters by talk as action. The discoursive stage functions as an analytical concept and a method of illustration for the dramaturgical framework for interpretative repertoires of educational partnership, the social choreography of the situation and constructions of relationships, interaction and encounters between participants. The theoretical background to the study describes how an educational partnership is formed in terms of changes in the institutional relationships between the family and day care. The section describes how educational partnership has de14THL Tutkimus 72/2012 veloped in the field of tension between women s workforce participation, the ideals concerning how to raise young children at home or in day care, and various political reforms concerning social services, family policy services and day care provision. The theory section also outlines various interpretations that influence parentpractitioner co-operation in the early childhood education services. Parent parent co-operation is described as educational co-operation, as expert-focused co-operation, as family-focused orientation, as child-centered orientation and finally as educational partnership. Educational partnership in the form of co-operation between early childhood education professionals, parents and children is conceptualised through the concept of partnership, its dialogical and relational nature and educational interaction. Discoursive constructions of educational partnership are generated in four discourses: the first describes the social relationships between practitioner and parent, the second describes home visits from early childhood education professionals, the third describes service negotiations in early childhood education, while the fourth describes educational partnership as a form of communication that creates relationships. Each discourse includes those interpretative repertoires that express activity identifiable as educational partnership and those repertoires that partnership discourse is distancing itself from. Early education professionals use discourse concerning social relationships to differentiate between a professional educational partnership and other similar social relationships between practitioner and parent that may potentially emerge. An educational partnership relationship is differentiated from those associated with friendship, peer status, other close relationships, and co-operation relationships that are based on the personals traits of practitioner and parent. In discourse on home visits in early childhood education, home visits are differentiated from ideas and perceptions that are associated with families in need of child welfare services and home visits made by child welfare workers. The initial home visit in early childhood education services contributes to the construction of an educational partnership and is viewed as a fundamental element of the pedagogical activity of day care centres while supporting the child s transition into day care. Discourse on home visits emphasises co-operation as a form of process, the contractual nature of collaboration, the regulation of the social distance between the parties concerned, and the child s agency. Discourse on service negotiations in early childhood education interprets educational partnership as a dialogical form of co-operation through which the family together with early education professionals conducts negotiations about the parents child care decisions and about the early education needs of the child. In the counter discourse, day care is constructed as the agency which knows better than the family what is best for the family and uses its own expertise to influence the family. The converse could also apply: the family might make all decisions concerning the child s early education needs exclusively on the basis of the family s own expertise. THL Tutkimus 72/2012 15 Discourse as a form of relationship-based communication emphasises the construction of relationships of collaboration and affection between the child, the parents and practitioner, commitment to these relationships and acting in these relationships. In relationship-based communication, the practitioner s capacity for reflection, emotion, empathy and authenticity is interpreted as competence for the relationship creation. In relationship-based communication, the teacher and also the parent is assigned responsibility for ensuring that the child develops an interpretation of him/herself as a unique individual, whose experiences of separation and attachment are the responsibility of the adults around him/her. Relationshipbased communication distances itself from interpretative repertoires that describe communication that excludes agents from the relationship. All these discourses generate interpretations of the child as agent. The child s role is generated in encounters between the practitioner and child in the supermarket, in the neighbourhood and in leisure-time activities, as well as in the child s home during the home visit and during encounters between the teacher and child in the day care centre. The study interprets educational partnership as part of a social trend whereby social, political and economic changes have altered the functions of family and day care and the institutional dynamic between them. The study asks whether the educational partnership creates a tension between early education professionals and those families who may possess widely differing resources and expertise concerning the care and education of a child. The study finds that, in order to attain smoothly functioning partnership procedures with families of small children in early childhood education, it is important that professionals are aware of the significance of maintaining equality among children, parents and families. Likewise it is important that professionals are aware of the process-based nature of partnership-based collaboration and the crucial importance of relationship-based communication. In terms of the future development of educational partnership, a key question focuses on the way that the early childhood education services interpret families differing values, attitudes, questions, concerns and support needs concerning child care and education, upbringing and learning. On the one hand, families concerns could be interpreted as ineptitude, inadequacy, weakness or inability on the part of the family. On the other hand, they could be seen as an expression of the family s wish to share with the early childhood professionals a part of the task of bringing up the child that previously has been exclusively situated in the family s private sphere. Families concerns about child rearing issues can also be interpreted as open initiatives towards educational institutions controlled by early childhood education experts, in the hope of reinforcing the parent s own expertise concerning his/her own child and the concept of a good childhood