Comparing policies and practices in different countries stimulates your critical thinking and opens new perspectives by provoking questions. The bigger the differences are, the better it works. But comparison can also be dangerous in a way, because if you ignore the context you might do misinterpretations and unwarranted generalisations (Johansson & Moss 2012).

An old saying goes: “Not to see the forest from the trees.” It means that if you only concentrate on specific details on a certain matter, you won’t see or understand the entity. That’s why in order to learn from the Finnish educational system, or from any other foreign system, you must challenge yourself to understand, at least partly, the culture and history behind the system. In other words, you need to understand the foundation before you can understand the practical side or specific details. These details can be never adopted as they are. They just won’t fit. You have to interpret and modify them through your cultural lenses.

Pedagogy emerges and develops always as a part of a wider social and cultural context. When getting familiar with different educational systems, it’s not about compering them to one and another. It’s not about better and worse. When comparing policies and practices in different countries you stimulate your own critical thinking and challenges you to understand your own education and culture in a deeper way (Vlasov 2018). It helps you to see, what are the strengths and what should be developed.

In Finland the interaction and building up of a close relationship with each child is emphasised. After a good relationship has been established, teaching and learning becomes easier, like we all know. In addition, the teacher’s relationship with the children and emotions towards the children effects all the interacting and learning in class. Like it is said in the Finnish ECEC Core Curriculum (2022): “Children learn the best when they feel well and secured. Positive emotional experiences and interactive relationships promote learning.” On a daily basis a lot of time is invested in mundane interaction, which makes it possible to really get to know the children; who they are, what they are interested in, what would they like to learn, what are their strengths and needs?

The other value, which Finnish ECEC pedagogy strongly leans on, is equity. Before the basis of pedagogy was in equality. Offering similar opportunities, activities and instructions for all children were ensured in many ways. In addition, it was a point of honour to ensure that the rules were the same for everyone. What has changed from those days is the fact, that we realized that the needs of individual child weren’t considered enough. The fact is, that if we demand the same thing from every child, the level of goals or expectations are in line with the skills and needs of some children, but for some they aren’t. It could be said that in fact the more developed form of equality is equity, even though both are needed. It means that we have to start implementing the pedagogy, which meets with the different needs and skills of different children and moves away from the pedagogy, which faced the children as a unit group.  There is a need of variation in pedagogy. We as teachers are in the key position. We should focus more on ourselves to change the way we are teaching and the learning environment as well, to meet the different needs of individual children. Not to demand the individual child to change to fit into the environment or into our instructions.

Two very important principles, which should be mentioned, and which guide the everyday life in the Finnish ECEC centres is learning through daily routines and every day is a play day. In Finnish ECEC centres learning and teaching are connected to the children’s natural ways of acting. There are a lot of playing, physical activities, exploring and self-expression. In Finland, a positive attitude towards learning, as well as learning to learn skills, are seen more important than the actual learning outcomes. So, it is more about the process, not the results. Push for academic skills before compulsory education is marginal.

The Finnish ECEC is a system, which integrates education and care. Daily outdoor activities, a healthy diet and adequate rest are seen to form the foundation for children’s growth, development and learning. Basic care situations are seen as valuable learning situations. Like every day is a play day, every moment is a learning moment. In Finland we talk about all-day pedagogy, by which we mean that each mundane moment offers opportunities for children to learn. The basic care situations are utilised from educational and pedagogical point of view.

Concept Educare reflects this idea and is the cornerstone of Finnish early years pedagogy. That’s why we Finns like to speak about early childhood education and care, instead of early childhood education only, as it seems what educators are doing in Malta. We stressed this argument recently during a morning conference in Malta which was organised by Mindful Education Malta under the auspices of the Ambassador of Malta to Estonia and Finland Dr Kenneth Vella.

Eeva Hujala is an emerita professor, Ph.D

Piia Roos is teacher of early years, Ed.D