Our new project, "Envisioning Tomorrow - imagining the future in ECEC and elementary school (Tänka framåt - satsa på framtiden inom småbarnspedagogik och skola)", has evolved significantly over the past few years, building upon the foundations laid by our previous projects, "Enjoy your work" and "SATSA," as well as societal changes prompted by recent reforms in ECEC. The purpose of Envisioning Tomorrow is to gather material on the current structures in daycare, preschool, and school (grades 1-2) with regard to sustainable support structures for children. Furthermore, the purpose is to determine the preparedness of the staff to receive and integrate children coming from various challenging backgrounds and investigate the level of trauma awareness among the staff and their readiness to act. The results are expected to provide more knowledge about which structures are sustainable, and which need further development to prevent future exclusion and marginalization at an early stage in the child's life.
Foundations of Success and focus on Collaboration
In Finland, a 2018 reform aimed to enhance the quality of daycare by establishing well-functioning multi-professional teams with clearer divisions of labor among three staff groups: teachers (with bachelor's degrees), social workers (with polytechnic degrees), and practical nurses. However, the new legislation raised concerns about creating divisions among staff, leading to distinct and potentially competing groups rather than an integrated team. Our “Enjoy your work”-project looked more closely at turnover intentions in ECEC and how the multi-professional teams functioned. We found that both general and emotional workloads were reasons for turnover intentions, and participation was a significant mediator (Heilala et al., 2022). Practical nurses, in particular, have reported feeling unclear about their roles (Repo et al., 2020), and our results also stressed this (Heilala et al., 2023). Our results showed that working in multi-professional teams did not always function smoothly, which of course has consequences for the children and their need for support.
Our next step was to focus on the importance of participation in multi-professional teamwork, since it turned out to be an important factor in our previous project. The SATSA-project (eng. We focus on collaboration) emphasized creating a sustainable work environment where staff strengths and skills are fully utilized, and participation is key to managing stress (Heilala et al., 2022). In this project, we also explored the concept of moral stress, defined as the physical response when one knows what needs to be done but is unable to act due to structural reasons (Jameton, 1993). The results showed that moral stress was moderate on average, though it varied, with some staff experiencing more stress than others. This suggests the need to develop ways of recognizing stressors at earlier stages and handling them before they grow too large, which is one of the aims of “Envisioning tomorrow”.
New Horizons within Envisioning Tomorrow Project
In Envisioning Tomorrow - imagining the future in pre-primary and elementary school we continue with the theme of stressful situations and examine their causes. Research has shown that the special needs of children in both early childhood education and care (ECEC) and elementary school put a strain on staff and teachers. In Finland, this is partly due to the implementation of a new curriculum for early childhood education in 2022, in which the guidelines for children's support needs have been revised, and the three-tier support model (general support, intensified support, special support) has been implemented even during the child's earliest years. This places additional pressure on staff to ensure they have the time to provide children with the support they need throughout their educational journey.
Similar challenges regarding children's support needs have been identified in basic education with teachers preferring support from special education teachers instead of assistants (Saloviita & Pakarinen, 2021). This is likely because assistants do not have the specialized expertise required. It can be concluded that staff need support in areas such as how to address children with support needs. Our own research findings on staff well-being in early childhood education (Heilala et al., 2023) indicate that those planning to change professions report significantly higher levels of support from special education teachers than those planning to remain. This suggests that even if staff receive support from special education teachers, it is not necessarily sufficient, and staff feel unable to meet some children's support needs, which can lead to stress. It is important to ensure that staff know how to practically apply the knowledge and advice they receive from, for example, special education teachers, and that they have the time to do so.