| Summary: | <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">Early Childhood Education has been a multidisciplinary field and focus of research. The academization </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">of kindergarten teacher training and the emergence of a professorship in the mid 1990s, however, signified a shift </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">in the development of Early Childhood Education (ECE). Early Childhood Education began to develop as a sub-<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">discipline within educational sciences. Due to the autonomous nature of Finnish universities it is possible to em-<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">phasize the contents of the teaching and the study within each discipline as desired. Along with the introduction </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">of university level kindergarten teacher education, universities have had to define Early Childhood Education and </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">its status as a new discipline. When clarifying the structural foundation of Early Childhood Education, we have </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">also have to consider how General Education or Education, especially Early Childhood Education as a Main Dis-<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">cipline, meets the challenges of scientific study and the changing field of Early Childhood Education. On the basis </p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">of our analysis there are two conflicting developments in the curricula: 1) ECE is one sub-field of General Educa-<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">tion, 2) ECE is the fourth educational science among other sciences of Education. And already in one Finnish uni-<span style="font: 12.0px Helvetica;"> </span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Times;">versity ECE is like anomaly, defined as Main Discipline.</p>
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