Dataset from the IKI-project.

Abstract

The three year IKI project collected data from early childhood educators, class and subject teachers from autumn 2018 until august 2021 from various Finnish cities. The data includes thematic interviews with educators as well as observations in early childhood education and in basic education. Participants were invited to share innovative activities using language(s) in different educational settings. Participants were recruited by email using teacher networks, professional organizations, via headteachers, municipal educational offices and through existing connections. Prior to the interviews and observations, all participants were provided with background information on the IKI project and explicitly asked for permission to participate in accordance with the JYU data handling requirements and the GDPR. Overall 17 interviews were carried out with early childhood educators from 13 daycare centres and 23 interviews with educators working in basic education. In addition students doing their thesis in the project have done 36 interviews in basic education. Project researcher Anu Palojärvi was primarily responsible for interviews with early childhood educators, and project researchers Tea Kangasvieri and Liisa Lempel were primarily responsible for interviews with class and subject educators. The duration for the interviews was approximately 20-60 minutes. All of the interviews were transcribed and identifiers were removed. The observation dataset includes 18 mornings of observation, with Anu Palojärvi observing on 15 of the 18 from morning to early afternoon. Altogether 24 early childhood educators were observed from 12 daycare centres. Observations took place in 11 schools and include 56 lessons from across grades 1-9. Early childhood education observations took place in 4 cities and school-based observations from 7 cities. The observation data includes handwritten notes, audio and video recordings depending on the permission agreements with participants. In addition to project researchers, student teachers from early childhood education, class and subject education were involved in carrying out observations and interviews as a part of their coursework or theses research. Video recordings have been modified according to the permission granted by participants and the purpose of the videos whether for research, teaching or both.

Part of the dataset is available by request as separate data publication.