Newcomer object ownership negotiations when transitioning from home care to early childhood education and care in Finland

Abstract

For those experiencing them, educational transitions include not only the present time but are embedded within institutions that precede and extend beyond the individuals. This article explores how, as an institutional space, the early childhood education and care (ECEC) setting is (re)produced within young children’s encounters with others during a transition period. Video-recorded observations of three infant-toddlers’ first months of attendance to an ECEC setting were analysed following analytic induction and video interaction analysis. Two examples illustrating object ownership negotiations are discussed. The results show that, in their encounters with others, newcomers actively contributed to (re)producing the ECEC setting by advancing their own understandings of objects and ownership, practicing their own ways of being with objects. Moreover, the results indicate that teachers’ contributions strongly influenced the outcomes of the encounters and, consequently, the constitution of shared understandings of objects and object ownership within the ECEC setting.