Äitien luottamuksen rakentuminen kasvattajiin varhaiskasvatuksen aloituksessa

Authors

• Niina Rutanen University of Jyväskylä, Finland
• Kati Laaksonen City of Jyväskylä, Finland

Keywords:

building of trust, luottamuksen rakentuminen, educational partnership, kasvatusyhteistyö, transition from home care to ECEC, varhaiskasvatuksen aloitus, under-three-year-olds in ECEC, alle kolmivuotiaat varhaiskasvatuksessa

Abstract

Educational partnership between parents and teachers in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is closely connected to children’s experiences during their first transition from home to ECEC. This transition is a starting point for educational partnership and supports building of trust between the diverse participants. In this article, we are interested in the process of building trust from the mothers’ perspectives. We will analyse from mothers talk how their trust to educators in ECEC institution builds while they are talking about their child’s first months in ECEC. The theoretical framework for the analysis is based on Rempel’s, Holmes’ and Zannan’s (1985) model for the development of trust. We will use the model to explore whether the dimensions of trust described in the model are present in the mothers’ talk. The data consists of five semi-structured interviews with mothers whose children were under 1,5-years-old when they started attending ECEC. At the time of the interviews, children had been attending ECEC for about four months. During the interviews, video clips from the ECEC setting were shown to mothers to promote reflections and commentaries. The mothers’ talk included two dimensions linked to the development of trust: 1) predictability linked to teacher’s behaviour (‘predictablity’, ibid.) and 2) towards dependability: valuing of personal characteristics of the teachers, and closer personal relationships to child and mother (‘dependability’, ibid.). The dimension of ‘faith’, following Rempel, Holmes and Zannan (1985), was not identifiable from the interview data.