Explorative Inquiries in Kindergarten

Marina Lundkvist, Helsinki University

Camilla Kronqvist, Åbo Akademi University

Birgit Schaffar, Helsinki University

National and international steering documents and research in early childhood pedagogy stress recognition, dialogue and participation.

Despite these intentions, research (Lundkvist 2016) shows that Finnish kindergarten teachers often fail to listen to children and to create conditions in which they can develop their ability to express and articulate their thoughts and experiences. In this study we use methods from Philosophy for children (P4C, see Lipman 2003, 2009 and Stanley 2012) to study whether using these methods in kindergarten teacher training improves the communicative skills of the students and allow kindergarten teachers to respond better to the children's spontaneous curiosity and to foster their thoughts and ideas about phenomena in their life world.