ABSTRACT
Finnish early childhood education has been preparing for and undergoing large-scale reforms in recent years. Previously, the emphasis of early childhood education and care (ECEC) has been to enable parents to work and to support families in raising their children. Only in the 21st century have we started to talk about early childhood education (as opposed to day care) (Onnismaa & Kalliala, 2010; Karila et al., 2013). Moreover, until recently, the administration of ECEC has been divided between two central administrative sectors. From the beginning of 2013, after public and political debate, the administrating and steering responsibilities for ECEC in Finland have moved from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health to the Ministry of Education and Culture. The idea behind the transformation was to develop and guide early childhood education as one operation. Transformations in administration sought to tie early childhood education (aged 0–6) more firmly to the overall Finnish basic education system (aged 7–16) (Karila et al., 2013).
