The years children spent in early education in relation to their social relations and objects of attention

ABSTRACT

This quantitative study examines the connection between the years that children spent in early childhood education and care (ECEC) and their social orientations and main objects of attention. The data were collected within the Progressive Feedback project by observing children: 20,457 observations of 972 six-year-olds from 360 child groups in Finland. According to the results, the years children spent in ECEC have a connection to their social orientations and main objects of attention, and differences between genders were discovered. The longer the children had attended ECEC, the less adaptive orientation was observed. The children that had attended ECEC for under a year were observed to be the least participative. Dominant orientation increased the longer the children had attended ECEC. Those that had been in ECEC for more than four years rarely paid attention to non-social objects and adults and often paid attention to several children.

KEYWORDS:

• ECEC
• social orientation
• object of attention
• social behaviour
• years spent in ECEC
• quantitative research

Acknowledgements

The article is based on the data of a large-scale early education research data, Progressive Feedback (https://blogs.helsinki.fi/orientate/). Aada Heikkilä states in the abstract of her article-based thesis: ‘The article The effects of the years spent in ECEC on children’s social orientations and objects of attention is supposed to be published in European Early Childhood Education Research Journal (EECERJ)’. None of the results have been published or presented before.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).