Abstract:

The main aim is to present an overview of distinctive expectations for teachers and also possible disagreements inside expectations. The field will be institutional early childhood education (ECE). Expectations are meant to have a positive influence on education. But it is also important to find out if expectations also cause disagreements for teachers´ pedagogical thoughts and professional work.

The aims are to answer the next questions: 1) from which kinds of the fields of early childhood education the distinctive pedagogical expectations are presented for teachers, and 2) which kinds of possible disagreements there may arise inside and between the several fields of early childhood education influencing the teachers´ thoughts and professional work?

The main theories, exploited in this study, are the Härkönen pedagogical systems theory for early childhood education and pedagogics, and the Bronfenbrenner ecological theory which handles with socialisation and development processes of people.

Methodologically the study is qualitative research based on the ready textual documents. The texts are selected on the criteria based on the main theories. Textual documents will be laws, official documents, curricula, results of former studies, books and articles. The texts are analysed by the qualitative content and the concept analyses. The Härkönen pedagogical systems theory is formed by using the exact concept analysis method. It means searching the different meanings of the concept in focus. The same methods are needed in this study for searching expectations and disagreements presented in the selected fields and texts.

As the preliminary results, the Härkönen pedagogical system theory shows the meanings of the concept of early childhood education and presents the following fields of early childhood education and the pedagogics: 1) culture and society, 2) science, 3) teacher education, 4) practice. The mentioned four fields are systems parts of the whole ECE system. The Bronfenbrenner systemic ecological theory follows socialisation and development processes, which can be seen also as the aims of educational and pedagogical processes. The two main theories offer the four conceptual fields (mentioned above) which can be followed as separated and as combined to search for expectations presented for teachers and their work.

The rules and challenges coming from the several fields may form and cause disagreements, inconsistency and conflicts. All the parts of the systems are interpretive and very diverse and pluralistic in the contents. Inside the fields, there are found philosophical, pedagogical and practical problematic questions. A scientific question also is where there are the informational theories focused on the pedagogics largely and deeply enough. And in which way does teacher education answer to the challenges of early childhood education? Is practice as fine as it is usually wanted to describe?

As the conclusions, it can be noted that disagreements may not be found from the same references as expectations but from other kinds of references such as critical books and articles. It is an educational and pedagogical task and the duty of scientific research to bring out also disagreements in the open.

Keywords:

Disagreements in early childhood education, early pedagogics, Härkönen pedagogical systems theory, Bronfenbrenner theory, content analysis, concept analysis.