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Abstract

This study aims to get an in-depth understanding of preschool team’s life experiences of images and to describe how these influence the choice of images used in the preschool interior. Hermeneutic phenomenology and philosophical concept of ‘life-world’ has been essential to this work and provides theoretical rationale. The research has been carried out at 2 preschool units and 6 services. The personnel consisted of preschool teachers and childminders working in teams, 11 of which have been interviewed. Semi-structured qualitative interviews served as a main data source. I have been interested to see how preschool staff experiences of images are related and how they differ. We have used cluster analysis technique in order to see if there are any systematic variations within responses. Three major themes have been identified: culture, nature and children in centre. Interview results show that all 11 preschool staff members have had strong personal life experiences related to images. Observations of the images has been an additional data source. The aim has been to see if adult personal life experiences related to image could have affected their image selection. The results show that all three themes that had been identified from the interview analysis also featured in the preschool environments. This is an intriguing finding underscoring the importance of the link between staff life experiences and decisions related to their teaching practice. Pre-school curriculum '98 expresses also ideas about environment. According to curriculum environment has to be open, rich, inviting, offer children new experiences. The observation data revealed that images of mass production have been dominating interior of preschool establishments. Most of the following have been used for instruction/learning. The same results show previous investigations too and indicates a transition such establishments underwent since the end of 19th century when preschool institution started focusing more on providing educational rather than only social/care services. This study has also helped to evaluate my own choice of images I use in the preschool practice. On reflection, it would be desirable to broaden the range of educational images to include those for instance, which also represent other ethnic cultures, images including pop art, abstract images etc.