IJEC (2016) 48:193–207

DOI 10.1007/s13158-016-0165-1

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A Narrative Inquiry about Values in a Finnish

Preschool: The Case of Traffic Lights

Jaana Juutinen1 • Elina Viljamaa1

Published online: 19 May 2016

 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Abstract This research explored how values are communicated in everyday life at
preschool. This narrative inquiry focused on how values are conveyed through the
use of a material artefact, a chart with traffic lights, as a communication and ped-
agogical tool. Twenty children aged 3–4 years in one Finnish preschool were
involved in the initial data collection, together with five practitioners. The initial
research data consisted of observations and video records from activities in the
preschool. On three subsequent occasions across an 18-month period, further
reflective discussions were held with the same practitioners about using the traffic
lights as a pedagogical tool. The findings highlighted that opposite values, like
practitioners’ discipline and children’s right to participate, could be communicated
around the same practice. Telling and retelling stories about everyday pedagogical
work, such as use of the chart with traffic lights, made practitioners more aware
about ethical aspects of early childhood education and also revealed something
about their emotions and morality. While values statements are written into the
curriculum, values in practice are constantly communicated through the social,
cultural and the material environment.

Keywords Preschool
Communication of values
Narrative inquiry
Pedagogical

practices

Résumé Cette étude porte sur la communication des valeurs dans la vie quotidienne
au préscolaire. Cette enquête narrative est axée sur la façon dont les valeurs sont
transmises grâce à un artefact matériel utilisé comme outil de communication et
pédagogique. Dans ce cas, il s’agit d’un tableau équipé de feux de circulation. Vingt
enfants âgés de 3 à 4 ans d’un centre préscolaire finlandais ainsi que cinq

& Jaana Juutinen

jaana.juutinen@gmail.com
1
Faculty of Education, University of Oulu, P.O.Box 2000, 90014 Oulu, Finland

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professionnels ont été impliqués dans la collecte initiale de données. Les données de
cette étude initiale sont constituées des observations et des enregistrements vidéo
d’activités dans le centre. À trois reprises ultérieures sur une période de 18 mois, des
discussions de réflexion ont été tenues avec les mêmes professionnels sur l’utili-
sation des feux de circulation comme outil pédagogique. Les résultats ont mis en
évidence que des valeurs opposées, comme la discipline demandée par les profes-
sionnels et le droit des enfants à participer, pouvaient être communiquées pour la
même pratique. Le fait de raconter et répéter des histoires sur le travail pédagogique
au quotidien, comme sur l’utilisation du tableau avec les feux de circulation, a
sensibilisé les professionnels aux aspects éthiques de l’éducation de la petite
enfance et leur a également révélé des informations sur leurs émotions et leur
morale. Alors que certains énoncés de valeurs sont inscrits au programme, dans la
pratique les valeurs sont constamment transmises à travers l’environnement social,
culturel et matériel.

Resumen Esta investigación ha analizado cómo se comunican los valores en la vida

cotidiana en los centros preescolares. La presente investigación narrativa se ha cen-
trado en cómo se transmiten los valores mediante el uso de un artefacto material, un
gráfico con luces de semáforo, como herramienta comunicativa y pedagógica. En la
recopilación inicial de información en un centro preescolar finlandés participaron
veinte niños de edades comprendidas entre los 3 y los 4 años, junto con cinco pro-
fesionales. La información de la investigación inicial estuvo formada por observa-
ciones y grabaciones en vı́deo de actividades en el centro preescolar. En tres ocasiones
posteriores, a lo largo de un perı́odo de 18 meses, se celebraron debates de reflexión
con los mismos profesionales acerca del uso de las luces de semáforo como herra-
mienta pedagógica. Los resultados de la investigación pusieron de manifiesto que era
posible comunicar valores contrapuestos, como la disciplina en el caso de los pro-
fesionales y el derecho a participar en el caso de los niños, mediante la misma práctica.
Contar una y otra vez historias acerca de la labor pedagógica de cada dı́a, como el uso
del gráfico con luces de semáforo, permitió a los profesionales ser más conscientes de
los aspectos éticos de la educación infantil temprana, además de resultar revelador en
lo relativo a sus emociones y moralidad. Mientras las declaraciones de valores se
escriben en el programa escolar, en la práctica los valores se comunican constante-
mente a través del entorno social, cultural y material.

Introduction

It is morning in the preschool. Simon, who is three years old, notices that the
traffic lights on the wall of the playroom are showing a red light. He goes to
the other room and says the following to the practitioner:

Simon: There is the red light!

Practitioner: Let’s change it to the green light, quickly! You are allowed to
play! The red light must have been left there from yesterday afternoon.

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In general, traffic lights are used to guide traffic and people. They convey an
unambiguous message regarding who is allowed to go and who has to wait. In this
study, the symbol of traffic lights made of cardboard is used in a Finnish preschool
context. We have observed the traffic lights used as a tool for controlling children’s
behaviour or the volume of their voices in many educational settings. In one of the
preschool groups involved in this study; however, we experienced something else.
The traffic lights seemed to evoke interaction and multimodal narration between the
children and the practitioners.
In this article, we explore the meaning-making processes around the traffic lights
from the point of view of values. The aim of the study is to deepen the
understanding about the communication of values in a preschool context. Our
research questions are as follows: How are values communicated and what values
are communicated around the traffic lights? Early childhood education institutions
are seen as significant places where children are assumed to learn values (Emilson
and Johansson 2009; Jensen 2009). However, relatively little is known about how
values are communicated and what kinds of values are prioritized in the Nordic
early childhood education system (Einarsdottir et al. 2014). Currently, values of
early childhood education are being discussed at the societal, institutional and
personal levels in Finland. New legislation and a new curriculum for early
childhood education and care are both in process.
The study is a part of a broader research project1 employing a participatory action
research method (Kemmis 2009; Somekh 2006). In our study, we combine a
narrative inquiry with action research. The communication around the traffic lights
is explored from the viewpoint of narrative practices that refer to the content, the
process and the context of narrating, i.e. what, how, where and when narrating
occurs (Gubrium and Holstein 2008). The narrative practices draw attention not
only to the social interaction (narrating and listening), but also to the temporal and
cultural contexts. In this study, the material environment is also understood as a part
of the narrative practice. At the core of this study is the meaning-making around one
material element of the preschool environment, i.e. the traffic lights.

Communicating Values

Values are regarded as principles and general guides to behaviour by which human’s
actions are considered good or desirable (Halstead and Taylor 2000). In previous
research, early childhood education is connected to value fields such as democracy,
competence, discipline, care and security (e.g. Broström and Hansen 2010; Emilson
and Johansson 2013; Puroila et al. 2012). These fields are overlapping and they
relate to both individual and collective aspects. Thornberg and Oguz (2013) define
values education as activities through which children learn and develop values.
Values education can be characterized as either explicit, which refers to embedding
teaching values in the official curriculum, or implicit, which refers to a broader

1
BELONG-project (From exclusion to belonging: Developing narrative practices in day care centers and
schools) and ValuEd-project (Values Education in Nordic Preschools: Basis of Education for Tomorrow).

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perspective of communicating values through the daily practices in the educational

settings (Thornberg and Oguz 2013). Values are often articulated in the curriculum,
and therefore practitioners are responsible for introducing values and moral issues to
children (Halstead and Taylor 2000; Thornberg 2008). National Curriculum
Guidelines on Early Childhood Education and Care in Finland (2004) emphasize
that the central value of early childhood education and care is human dignity, and
that the principal target of early childhood education and care is to promote
children’s overall well-being (Heikkilä et al. 2004).
In the everyday practices of preschools, values appear as a complex and
challenging phenomenon. Values can be communicated either explicitly or
implicitly (Emilson and Johansson 2009). The values of practitioners, children
and parents are constantly in a dialogue (Tirri and Husu 2002). The values of
different parties may differ and come into conflict. Moreover, as Sayer (2011)
argues, ‘‘Our professed values may differ from our values in use, not necessarily
through deliberate deceit, but through lack of reflection and self-knowledge’’ (p.
26). Studies highlight that values are mostly unconscious and that there is a lack of
both professional language and knowledge regarding values education among
teachers (Thornberg 2008; Thornberg and Oguz 2013).
Habermas’ (1987) theory of communicative actions provides one potential
framework for exploring the communication of values in the early childhood
context (Emilson and Johansson 2013). Two forms of communication in Habermas’
theory are conceptualized as strategic and communicative action. Strategic
communication is oriented towards goals and effectiveness, and communicative
communication is oriented towards mutual understanding. Emilson and Johansson
(2013) point out that when applying Habermas’ theory to the communication
between young children and practitioners, there is a need to also take into account
the forms of communication other than spoken language, such as gestures, mimicry
and glimpses (see also Puroila et al. 2012).
In this study, the communication of values is explored in relation to the social,
cultural and material environment of the preschool. Preschools are full of artefacts
with certain meanings, for example, pictures, the daily calendar, nametags and
benches for the circle time. Unlike in many previous studies, we highlight this material
environment as an active part of the communication of values. The study is inspired by
Lenz Taguchi’s (2010) thoughts that provide insights into how materiality and
meaning-making are intertwined in communication. In the daily practices, the way one
handles the learning material, furniture and architecture of the educational settings
serves to ‘‘materialize our own and the students’ discursively inscribed subjectivities
as teachers and as learners’’ (Lenz Taguchi 2010, p. 22). As Barad (2008) suggested,
we do not separate the material and linguistic worlds but explore them as parallels.

Combining Action Research and a Narrative Inquiry

The study combined participatory action research and a narrative inquiry. In line
with an action research orientation, the practitioners were committed to reflect on
and develop their own work together with the researchers (Heikkinen et al. 2012).

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We do not think of ourselves as outsiders and preschool practitioners and children as

insiders in the research process. Rather, the knowledge was produced together in the
relationships between the children, the practitioners and the researchers.
Previous research suggests that utilizing narratives in action research seems to
promote critical reflection and the development of educational practices (Heikkinen
et al. 2012; Pushor and Clandinin 2009). Narrativity forms the ontological,
epistemological and methodological foundation of the study. The study is based on
the idea of narrating as a way for human beings to make meaning of themselves and
the world (Bruner 2006). According to Bruner (1990), narrating often arises from
human beings’ need to develop a coherent explanation for things and events,
including both for one’s own and others’ experiences. Therefore, we encouraged the
practitioners to narrate and reflect about their work. Similar to Rabin and Smith
(2013), we assumed that in addition to providing researchers with insight into their
work experiences, practitioners’ narratives also offer the practitioners an opportu-
nity to become more conscious of values, ethics and moral aspects of their own
work. Moreover, listening to others’ narratives can generate a phenomenon called
‘‘resonance’’, which here means knowing something intuitively without being
conscious of such knowledge (Conle 2005).
In our study, we employ the concepts of narrating and narrative in a broader
sense than usual. First, whereas narrative research mostly focuses on verbal
narratives, we assume that narrating is a multimodal, aesthetic process. This enables
including the young children’s narrating into our study. As previous research
reveals, young children’s narrating involves playing, drawing and body language in
addition to verbal accounts (Ahn and Filipenko 2007; Kinnunen and Einarsdottir
2013; Puroila 2013; Viljamaa 2012). Second, the concept of narrative practices
broadens the focus of narrative research beyond the contents of narratives into the
process and the context of narrating (Clandinin et al. 2011; Gubrium and Holstein
2008). Narrative practice is a broad term encompassing ‘‘the content of accounts
and their internal organization, as well as the communicative conditions and
resources surrounding how narratives are assembled, conveyed and received in
everyday life’’ (Gubrium and Holstein 2008, p. 247). Some examples of what the
concept of narrative practices refers to include what kinds of narratives are
supported or rejected, who are and are not allowed to share their narratives and how
narratives are maintained. Narratives are always physically shaped somewhere. In
this study, we also consider the material environment as a significant part of
narrative practices (see Bennet 2010; Hultman and Lenz Taguchi 2010; Giugni
2011).

The Study

The Participants and Setting

This article focuses on one preschool group with 20 children aged 3–4 years, as well
as three trained practitioners and two assistants. There was a change in the policy of
early childhood education at the municipality level in Finland in the autumn of

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2013. Children with special needs were integrated into the ordinary groups. One of
the practitioners involved in this study had been working as a preschool nurse for
over 30 years with children with special needs. The second practitioner was a
preschool teacher who had been working in preschools for 3 years. The third
practitioner was also a preschool teacher who had 6-month experience of working in
preschools before this study began. The first and the second practitioner were able to
use sign language. The practitioners had not worked together before the research
project started. There were two children with special needs and four children who
did not speak Finnish as their first language. The practitioners used pictures and
supportive signs when working with the children.

Research Data and Analysis

The two researchers engaged in an intensive collaboration with the practitioners

during the project. The research data were formulated in three phases and consist of
observations and videos from preschool’s daily life and reflective discussions with
three practitioners.
The first phase was in October 2013 when the researchers spent 5 days in the
preschool. We conducted participatory observations and audio- and video-recorded
the everyday life in the preschool. The children and practitioners of the preschool
group took part in this phase. After the observation period, we started to analyse the
videos and observation notes. The bustle around the traffic lights captured our
interest: Why was there a lot of multimodal narration and shared action around these
lights? The traffic lights were made of cardboard, and they were mounted on the
wall as a chart so that children could easily see them. They were placed in two
rooms of the preschool: one was placed on the wall of the playroom and other one
was on the wall of the hall. We started to intentionally aggregate observations and
videos concerning the traffic lights. We focused on the interaction between the
children, the practitioners and the traffic lights. We followed Riessman’s (2008)
idea of thematic analysis to clarify the interaction around the traffic lights. At this
phase, we did not interpret data from the aspect of specific values, like discipline,
but our starting point was children’s participation and meaning-making process
around the traffic lights.
The second phase took place in June 2014 when we invited the same three trained
practitioners to recall, relive and reflect on the practices around traffic lights (see
Huber et al. 2013). We organized two discussions with the practitioners where we
looked at the video material together. Inspired by the videos, we asked the
practitioners to tell us about the traffic lights, including how the practice was created
and whether they still maintained the practice. Our aim was to gain understanding of
how practitioners develop pedagogical practices. In the third phase, which took
place in March 2015, we met with the same practitioners to discuss the practice of
the traffic lights again with the intention of learning whether they were still using
the practice. By this time, practitioners had started to work with new colleagues in a
different preschool group.
This was a holistic research project in which the collection of the research data
and the analysis were intertwined. From all these discussions, we analysed how

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practitioners communicated their values when recalling and reflecting on the

practice of the traffic lights and what values practitioners communicated. Data were
collaboratively analysed by the practitioners and researchers by discussing and
watching the videos to share and construct knowledge together (see Riessman
2008). For us as researchers, the narratives were not objects, but something to think
with (Morris 2002; Clandinin et al. 2011). This means that narratives enabled us to
develop and expand our own thinking. We analysed the research data as narratives
that were shared with us, and we were also narrating these stories with the children
and the practitioners.
Consent to participate in the study was obtained from the children, the parents,
the practitioners, the preschool’s leaders and the governing body of early childhood
education in the municipality. The research ethics adopted in the study was based on
both ethical rules and relational morality and responsibility for the ‘‘other’’ (Estola
et al. 2010; Noddings 1984). For example, when observing, we tried to interpret
children’s willingness to be filmed. We also became part of the social situations and
doing so required sensitivity and respect for the children’s privacy (see Sørensen
2014). We respected their trust by thinking about what research data we were
allowed to use as well as where and how we were allowed to use it. In our
collaboration with practitioners, the starting point was their willingness to develop
their work in this project. The research ethics was based on the attempt to create
trust and solve the ethical questions together with the participants. The analysis and
interpretation were layered; the practitioners had a chance to comment on the study
throughout the research project. This means that the knowledge of the study was
constructed together with the practitioners, and we shared our interpretations during
the phases with the practitioners and the practitioners reflected on and enriched our
analysis.

The Findings

Communicating Values in Everyday Practice

The traffic lights had just been introduced to the children 1 day before we arrived to
conduct the observations. The practitioners told us that the meaning of the lights
was as follows: The green light means that children are allowed to play; the yellow
light means that play can continue for a while; and the red light means that children
are allowed to tidy up their play. After tidying up, there will be a transition to
another task, for example, dressing up, going outside or lunch. Practitioners later
explained that the lights were a pedagogical solution to a need that they had realized
during the first few months with the children. A practitioner shared that ‘‘Our first
weeks were chaotic and something needed to be done’’. The aim was to develop a
collective practice to help children to anticipate the activities coming and motivate
them to tidy up the toys. The traffic lights served as the practitioners’ tool for
controlling and guiding the children’s behaviour. The following excerpt provides an
example of the adults’ power over the children in this context.

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Linda: At first, we didn’t actually think about who is allowed to change the
lights. Then the cardboard was torn many times and we fixed it. Then some
children started to argue about who can change the light. So then we said let’s
make an agreement that it is the adult who changes it.
Helena: However, it’s the adult who decides when it is time to switch the light.
The practitioners narrated that they were the ones who should decide when it is time
to tidy up. As also noted in previous research, the practitioners assumed that
children should learn how to take care of toys, tidy up their toys and maintain the
routines and timetables of the preschool (Odenbring 2014). This meaning of the
traffic lights can be connected with disciplinary values. By organizing the material
environment, for instance, the furniture, toys and learning material, the practitioners
created and valued safety, structure and order (Lenz Taguchi 2010). The traffic
lights also had the meaning of helping children become accustomed to following
directions and to perceive the structure of the day.
However, based on the video material, it was interesting to note that there were
also other meanings connected with the traffic lights. The new practice evoked
curiosity among the children, and they actively participated in making meanings of
the lights. The following excerpt provides an example of children’s participation in
the meaning-making.
After breakfast, a 3-year-old boy named Adam is watching the traffic lights on
the wall of the play room. The red light still remains on from the day before.
Adam: Are we going to go to sleep soon? Which light is the sleeping light?
Linda (practitioner): Now it is time to play, so let’s change to the green light.
Could the sleeping light be when all of the lights are off? Actually, we haven’t
thought about which one is the sleeping light.
Adam was allowed to suggest something, and his proposition about the sleeping
light was taken seriously. As this was an integrated group, there were some children
who had language-based learning disabilities. The children’s initiatives, especially
the verbal ones, delighted the practitioners. Even though the tool was used for
controlling purposes, the children were invited to take part in formulating and
making the meanings of this practice. This notion is similar to Sumsion and Wong’s
(2011) description of social belonging. They write that ‘‘central to social belonging
is recognition and acceptance by the group or community, and participation in its
practices, rituals, activities and gatherings’’ (p. 42). This excerpt also reflects how
the practitioners serve as crucial promoters of children’s participation in the daily
practices of preschools (see Juutinen 2015; Sandberg and Eriksson 2010). In the
excerpt above, Adam was an active narrator. Linda enabled Adam’s participation,
and they constructed the meaning of the traffic lights together.
The traffic lights were also intertwined in play situations. Play can be seen as a
place for children’s multimodal and embodied narrating (Puroila et al. 2012;
Viljamaa 2012). In the following excerpt, the traffic lights were a part of the child’s
play:
Three-year-old Paul is jumping on the carpet. He talks about his play as being
a super hero. The practitioner, Maria, starts to talk with him. Paul tells her that

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the super hero stops jumping when the red button is pushed. When he is
talking about the button, he constantly looks at the traffic lights on the wall.
Children combine elements into their play, for example, from their experiences,
others’ experiences, the environment and books. They modify and transfer the
meanings of these elements using associative approaches (Viljamaa 2010, 2012).
Whereas the red light on the wall was the symbol of stopping play and tidying up,
Paul seemed to incorporate the red colour and the red button of the traffic lights into
his play as a superhero. This reminds us that children do not directly adopt the
meaning of things from adults, but modify them in a way that adults are not aware
of. Children also challenge the traffic lights, as illustrated by 4-year-old Tony in the
following excerpt:
Linda (practitioner): Tony, stop playing with, there is the red light!
(emphatically)
(Linda tries to get Tony’s and Sam’s attention many times but they continue
playing)
Linda: Tony, come here, I need to talk to you. Do you remember what we have
been talking about earlier? If you want to continue your play with Sam in the
afternoon, now it is the red light and that means that you have to stop playing.
Then you can continue your play in the afternoon.
Tony: But my mom said that there can’t be traffic lights in the preschool!
Linda: However, we can show your mother the lights here. Your mom hasn’t
yet visited here. We can show her. But when the red light is on, that means that
it is time to start tidying up the play and you, Tony, know that. Then you can
continue your play later with Sam.
The practitioner showed determination; she had a clear idea that it is time to tidy up
the toys and stop the play. In this episode, the disciplinary values are communicated
through the traffic lights. Tony had talked about the lights at home, and his mother
wondered how there could be traffic lights in the preschool. Clearly, Tony was
confused about the cultural meaning of the traffic lights that his mother had
explained and the meaning of the lights in the preschool. In addition to controlling
Tony’s actions, the practitioner was listening to Tony’s attempts to make sense of
the lights and supported Tony’s thoughts. This excerpt also showed how the
physical material, a piece of cardboard, echoed the shared cultural meanings. We
can see how the concrete material and its associations with cultural meanings played
an active role in the meaning-making process.

Communicating Values by Recalling, Reliving and Reflecting the Everyday

Practice

In addition to exploring how values are communicated in practice, we understand

that when the practitioners verbalized the practice of the traffic lights, they
simultaneously worked with their values. After the observation period, we returned
to the preschool and had three discussions with practitioners about the traffic lights.

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We watched the videos together and asked the practitioners to tell us about the
practice.
Helena: Well, we introduced it (the traffic lights) to everyone. I said to all of
the children, ‘Look, I have a new thing here, take a look’! And then we
explored it together and then children started to play. So we put it into
operation immediately.
Linda: And all of us (practitioners), we put our hearts in this and it was
introduced in a positive way. We didn’t stop using the lights even if some
weren’t so keen on it, but we carried on and on. Then some children took to it,
and they started to support it and carry on and that is the way it went, the ball
started to roll. Still, the main thing is the way we practitioners bring something
into the group and how we express it.
The practitioners told that it was important that the tool was mutual for everyone,
and they emphasized the fact that the children were the ones who started to maintain
the practice. This view mirrors children’s participation and right to influence their
environments, which have been connected with democratic values in previous
research (see Bae 2009). The practitioners described their thoughts about
encountering the children in a positive manner. The practitioners gave a lot of
space and time for children to construct the meaning of the lights. However, it took
a while for all of the children to become engaged in this practice. The practitioners
told that some children seemed to support and teach other children, and this is how
the traffic light practice began to live among the children.
The practitioners started to work with new colleagues and new children in
autumn of 2014. The practitioners told that they encountered difficulties when they
began to use the traffic lights with new colleagues who were not familiar with their
ideas about the traffic lights.
Maria: So in our group it did not go well. The other practitioners wanted to use
the lights more for giving warnings to children. I thought that one cannot
associate both meanings with the same practice.
Linda: It is not for that purpose! (in an upset voice)
Maria’s new colleagues used the traffic lights as a warning, with a red light meaning
that a child was too noisy or that a child’s behaviour was not appropriate. It was a
tool only for discipline and controlling. In Maria’s narration, she described a conflict
between disciplinary values and values of belonging among the practitioners. Maria
narrated the tensions around the traffic lights, as well as broader tensions in their
collaboration, in the following way:
Maria: I think the way we work is not good enough; things could be much
better. The other two (practitioners) think that our way of working is good and
that we don’t have to think about it anymore. It is really frustrating when you
know that things could be much better here. Sometimes I really felt that I was
being demanding and annoying when I said that we have to think about this
and talk together. At the same time, the others think that everything is fine
(with tears in her eyes).

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Maria’s description showed that it was hard for her to explain her values over and
over again to other practitioners when they think completely differently about what
is important when working with children. She felt that these tensions were very
frustrating and emotionally challenging. Maria pointed out that it is not self-evident
to bring good practices, like traffic lights, to a new preschool group and assume that
everybody shares the same values when using them. A piece of cardboard does not
‘‘work’’ alone as a pedagogical tool; the practitioners make the meanings through
their values. Finding out the values they can share requires hard work and a lot of
reflecting together in order to identify their common way of doing their work. Linda
underlined how they introduced the traffic lights and what kind of work it required
from the practitioners:
Linda: Although the traffic lights didn’t function at first, we worked very hard.
We worked hard to find out how we can get this working. I think if something
doesn’t work then we have to think what we have to do, what I have done
wrong, what you have done right or wrong. What do we have to change so that
we can get this working? We have to ask if we want this chaos. Then we have
to start doing this and that. We had a common will.
Linda pointed out how important it is to critically evaluate the practices together.
She also emphasizes that everyone makes mistakes. The basis for being able to
develop the work is not only to recognize and reflect on one’s own mistakes, but
also to recognize on what is done well. The practitioners highlighted in many phases
of the research project that they valued working together, with children and with
other practitioners. There is a close connection to creating a sense of community and
the value of belonging. The practitioners described caring for the children. In the
following excerpt, Linda emotionally described how she feels about her work.
Linda: But still working is pleasant, it is pleasant to come to work. I always
say that so long as I am touched in here (shows her heart), it is nice to open
that door. After all, the vacation is lovely, but then the work starts and children
have been missing you and you have been missing them. Children come and
give you hugs and that gives you strength. Really. Just like that.
The practitioners’ reflections were often emotionally saturated. As reported in
previous research, we noted that emotions are tightly connected with caring values
in early childhood education (Estola 2003; Taggart 2011; Broström and Hansen
2010).

Discussion

This study raises the issue regarding whether values are included in the preschool
pedagogy. The practice of the traffic lights also shows that values were tightly
intertwined with materiality. The traffic lights used in the preschool were loaded
with cultural, social and personal meanings. The practitioners highlighted the
children’s role in participating and influencing the daily practices. Different, even
opposite values, such as discipline and participation, were communicated around the

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traffic lights. Although the practitioners were determined regarding how things
should be, at the same time they were sensitive to children’s initiatives and their
own mistakes. Their sensitivity to children’s ideas can be interpreted as a dialogical
relationship that ‘‘is saturated and mediated by values and emotions’’ (Dahlberg and
Moss 2005, p. 99). On the grounds of our study, we argue that in this particular
preschool, where people worked and lived in close co-operation, values were not
stable but rather were shaped and negotiated constantly in relations. Using traffic
lights was an example of everyday narrative practices, and values were embedded in
these practices. Therefore, this narrative practice offered a window for looking at
the process of communicating values. The practitioners’ values were manifested in
social, cultural and material relations.
The study opens up interesting insights into the value of belonging. Based on our
study, it seems that creating belonging was not a conscious aim of the practitioners’
work, even though they were promoting children’s belonging to the group. The
sense of belonging to a peer group is related to the values of well-being and
democracy, and therefore it is practitioners’ responsibility to foster and encourage
children’s sense of belonging. From the children’s perspective, we understand
belonging as a part of the democratic values. Children’s right to participate,
influence and be heard in their educational environments was given space in this
preschool group through the pedagogical tool of the traffic lights (see also Sandberg
and Eriksson 2010). Regarding the practitioners’ perspective, their feelings about
belonging to the preschool group were described. There were two totally different
narratives: in the first narrative, the practitioners worked hard together with the
same aims and felt a strong sense of belonging. In the second narrative, the
practitioners were frustrated and sad about the lack of shared principles and aims
among the new practitioners. The latter narrative resonates with Yuval-Davis’s
(2011) notion that the value of belonging is often self-evident unless it becomes
threatened in some way.
Methodologically, this study provides ideas for doing research in close co-
operation with participants. The combination of participatory action research and a
narrative inquiry provided a fruitful way to understand values in early childhood
education in one preschool group. In terms of the limitations of this study, the
research data were only derived from one preschool and the findings are more
tentative than generalized in this research context. However, this enabled us to be
closely involved in the project with the practitioners for 3 years. Beyond being
fruitful in terms of research, the project also opened the practitioners’ eyes to look at
their everyday work in a new way. We emphasize that it is an ethical question to
further develop research methods that benefit participants.
In this project, it was easy for practitioners to talk about their work from a
pedagogical perspective. As Thornberg (2008), Thornberg and Oguz (2013) points
out in his studies, values and values education are not consciously discussed by
teachers in educational settings. However, telling and retelling about everyday work
seem to make practitioners more aware of the ethical aspects of early childhood
education. This is in the line with Estola (2003, p. 31), who writes about ‘‘the
narratives as one variety of the language of practice’’. When practitioners told about
their work, they also revealed something about their emotions and morals. It is not

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enough that values are written in the curriculum. We emphasize the importance of
discussions about everyday work in early childhood education, about practices used
in groups and about practitioners’ emotions towards their work. As one practitioner
crystallized, ‘‘You don’t think about values until you begin to talk about your work,
until you have to say that this is how I work’’.

Acknowledgements This study was funded by NordForsk (Values education in Nordic preschools—
Basis of education for tomorrow; Project Number 53581) and the Academy of Finland (From exclusion to
belonging: Developing narrative practices in day care centers and schools; Project Number 264370).
Author Jaana Juutinen has also received funding from the Finnish Cultural Foundation, North
Ostrobothnia Regional fund and Mannerheim League for Child Welfare. We also want to thank our
Nordic research colleagues for their constructive comments for this article.

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