Kehittävän varhaiskasvatuksen mahdollisuudet

Authors

• Pentti Hakkarainen Vytautas Magnus University, Education Academy, Vilnius, Lithuania

Keywords:

developmental early education, kehittävä varhaiskasvatus, personality, leikki, play, leikkimaailma, play world, persoonallisuus

Abstract

Early childhood education has faced new challenges. There is credible evidence from previous follow-up studies that investment to high quality early education programs is the most profitable investment in any educational system globally, but worldwide crises multiply the challenge and complicate the idea what is quality of early education. This article introduces a forgotten project plan written by a task force led by Davydov (1988). The plan presents the idea of future oriented early childhood education, which focuses on personality development of every child. The plan emphasizes parallel development of general abilities and individual differences of all children. Joint play of adults and children is the main method of introducing human values to children. The project plan launched two experimental early education projects in 1996. The first one focuses on the development of children’s creative imagination and the second one on narrative learning in play world environments. The current paper will introduce and discuss these experimental projects.