The years children spent in early education in relation to their social relations and objects of attention

ABSTRACT This quantitative study examines the connection between the years that children spent in early childhood education and care (ECEC) and their social orientations and main objects of attention. The data were collected within the Progressive Feedback project by observing children: 20,457 observations of 972 six-year-olds from 360 child groups in Finland. According to the results, the years children spent in ECEC have a connection to their social orientations and main objects of attention, and differences between genders were discovered. The longer the children had attended ECEC, the less adaptive orientation was observed. The children that had attended ECEC for under a year were observed to be the least participative. Dominant orientation increased the longer the children had attended ECEC. Those that had been in ECEC for more than four years rarely paid attention to non-social objects and adults and often paid attention to several children.


Introduction
While there is a significant amount of research related to the potential effects of early childhood education and care (ECEC) on children's development (e.g.Burger 2010;Côté et al. 2013;McCartney et al. 2007;van Huizen and Plantenga 2018), opinions differ on the exact nature of the effects.Research often focuses on the quality of ECEC (Eliassen, Daae Zachrisson, and Melhuish 2018;Melhuish et al. 2015;Sylva et al. 2011;Vandenbroeck, Lenaerts, and Beblavý 2018) or the effects it has on learning outcomes (Hiilamo, Merikukka, and Haataja 2018;OECD 2017).Social behaviour and the years that children spent in ECEC are less popular subjects of research.It could be argued that it is essential to study the long-term impacts of ECEC.For example, in 2019, 13.6 million children were enrolled in ECEC in the 27 countries of the European Union (Eurostat).
In this study, we explore the topic by looking for connections between the years children spent in ECEC, their social orientations, and their main object of attention in ECEC.Social orientation means how the children are reacting to their social environment and whether they are trying to change it or not (Nikkola, Reunamo, and Ruokonen 2020).
The main object of attention in this research refers to the object that the child focuses their attention on and establishes contact with, including peers and adults for example (see observation instructions).The theory of social orientations is influenced by Piagetian, Vygotskian and Froebelian traditions (Reunamo 2009).In this research, we are aiming to find out how the years spent in ECEC affect children's social orientations and the main object of attention and whether their's gender makes any difference.
The theory of social orientations is organised into a fourfold table comprising two continuums.The first is based on Piaget's view of adaptation, consisting of accommodation and assimilation (Reunamo 2007).The other continuum is formed from Vygostky's supplement to Piaget's equilibrium theory (Reunamo 2009).In other words, social orientations are defined by two dimensions: open-closed (Piaget) and adaptationagency (Vygotsky).The open-closed dimension means that at the open-end of the continuum, the child merges their ideas with those of others, and at the closed-end, the child applies their own views.With adaption-agency dimension, the child adapts to a situation and does not try to change it (adaption) or the child affects the situation by bringing something new that affects the formation of the situation (agency).When these two dimensions are combined, four social orientations are formed (Nikkola et al. 2020)adaptive, participative, dominant, and withdrawn, which are explained more specifically later in this paper.The main object of attention also includes the perspective of contact.For practical reasons, the variable child's main object of attention and contact variable (see observation instructions C https://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/reunamo/apu/obs_instructions15.pdf) is shortened to the main object of attention in this paper.

Social orientations
To foster a better understanding of the social orientations and their relevance to the results, we will provide a more detailed explanation below.

Adaptive orientation
Adaptive orientation consists of open and adaptation dimensions, so the child is open to others but not trying to change the social situation.A practical example would be a child, who is playing with others, but not bringing any new elements to the play (Nikkola, Reunamo, and Ruokonen 2020).Adaptation can be viewed through Piaget's idea of equilibration and adaptation.Equilibration is in the middle of a continuum that starts from closed schemas that do not change in the process and ends with open schemas that can change in the process.The closed schemas can be described as assimilation and open schemas as accommodation.Assimilation and accommodation together form an adaptation process, which refers to the child's ability to better adapt to their environment during development (Reunamo 2009).According to Piaget, social development also happens through adaptation: the child learns better ways to adapt to the environment through interaction (Reunamo 2007).
In earlier research, children's adaptive behaviour has been associated with lower cortisol levels in ECEC, and children were also found to act more adaptively with adults than peers.Lower cortisol levels indicate lower stress levels for adaptive children (Reunamo et al. 2012).In the observation instructions, adaptive orientation was defined as being 'adaptable and open, accepting and considerate (does not modify the shared situation)'.

Participative orientation
Participative orientation is formed from an open and agentive dimension, where the child is open to the ideas of others and, at the same time, brings something new to the situation (Nikkola, Reunamo, and Ruokonen 2022).We can add the agentive schemas to Piaget's theory of equilibrium process to gain a better understanding of participative orientation.Piaget did not consider that schemas could change the environment, but both open and closed schemas may indirectly influence the environment to varying degrees.This way of thinking approaches the Froebelian way of seeing children, since Froebel emphasised children's developing understanding of their own potentialities (Reunamo 2009).
In international settings, it has been found that children in academically oriented preschools have fewer participative orientations than their peers in play-based preschools (Cheng et al. 2015).In Finland, it has been noted that culturally and linguistically diverse children have less participative behaviour in ECEC than their peers (Arvola et al. 2021).Participative children also tend to be more creative (Nikkola, Reunamo, and Ruokonen 2020).In the observation instructions, participative orientation was characterised as 'participating, interactive, open, cooperates (brings own ideas, cooperation, modifies the shared situation)'.

Dominant orientation
Dominant social orientation is formed from the closed and agentive ends of the continuums: the child focuses on their own idea and excludes other ideas, leading the situation to the direction they want.This can be done by force or by opening up the possibility for others to participate in the activity.For example, a determined child defines how a roleplay of puppies develops.With skilful dominant behaviour, the child has contact with the opinions of others and changes them, showing that the child is clearly leading the situation (Reunamo et al. 2013).Likeable, socially skilled, and persuasive children motivate others to change while domineering, aggressive and assertive children put pressure on others to change (Laursen 2018).
Children with self-regulating difficulties were found to behave more dominantly than their peers, and children with language problems were less dominant than children with special educational needs (Kuutti et al. 2021).Arvola et al. (2021), on the other hand, found that culturally and linguistically diverse children were observed to be dominant more often.Children that force their actions through and are dominant may not be in the habit of creating shared content with others (Nikkola, Reunamo, and Ruokonen 2020).In the observation instructions, dominant orientation was defined as being 'Self-willed, stubborn or domineering (modifies the situation according to own point of view)'.

Withdrawn orientation
Withdrawn orientation stems from closed schemas and adaptation.In this orientation, both the child's mental images of the environment and their strategies remain unchanged.The child is not open to the ideas of others but keeps to themselves and does not try to change the social situation.These children often work with themselves detached from others and have their own terms for the situation (Reunamo 2007).The reasons for the children's withdrawn behaviour can be diverse including peer rejection, shyness and preference for solitude (Chen 2015).In this research, all withdrawal behaviour is assessed against the criteria above.
In Finland, it has been observed that children with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds are more likely to be withdrawn or non-social in ECEC than their peers (Arvola et al. 2021).Similarly, children with severe disabilities have been found to exhibit more withdrawn and non-social behaviour than their peers in ECEC (Kuutti et al. 2021).In the observation instructions, the withdrawn orientation was characterised as 'withdraws from social situations, non-social, non-interactive (detached from the situation of others)'.

Materials and methods
In this study, we aim to describe how the years spent in ECEC affect children's social behaviour.To this end, the research questions are: (1) How do the years spent in ECEC affect children's social orientations?
(2) How do the years spent in ECEC affect children's main object of attention?
Comprehensive research data from the Progressive Feedback project, which consists of thousands of observations conducted in Finnish ECEC units, was used in the analysis.As the dataset was large, and the measures were predefined, quantitative research methods were used.

Observation
The research data was collected as a part of the Progressive Feedback project, which ran from 2017 to 2021, by observing children in ECEC units from Monday to Friday between 8 am and 4 pm.The observers had strict rules on how to behave during the observations, they were told to be polite, but to have as little contact as possible with anyone.The observers were qualified ECEC teachers who had been trained in observation.During the first day of training, they practiced with observation instructions and coded example videos of different ECEC activities.After that, the observers practiced the observation in their own groups.A few weeks later during the second training day, the reliability of the observation was checked by coding more sample videos of ECEC activities and discussing the differences.
The observation started by choosing five children at random for observation from among all those who had received their guardians' consent and marking them with numbers according to the order in which they were drawn.The first four-minute observation cycle started from child number one, after which the observer moved on to the next observation cycle with child number two.When all five children were observed, the observer started again from the first child and continued accordingly for the rest of the day.The children were observed systematically in the order listed.If a child was missing, the next child in the list was observed.Children, who were absent or who arrived later, were included in the observation when they arrived.If it was impossible to observe the whole group, for example if half of the group were at the park and the other half was at the ECEC unit, the observer observed the largest group available.To prevent systematic bias, the observer started each day with a different (random) child in the list.As young children can change activities frequently, the observer chose the main activity in the observation cycle.
The observer did not try to interact or make eye contact with the children but answered their questions when necessary.For example, if children asked what the observer was doing, they were told that 'I'm doing research for your daycare centre, so I'm just recording codes about what's happening'.
Experience showed that children very quickly ignored the observer.It was not emphasised that the children were being observed, and nor was the observed child aware of being observed.The observer did not need be in close proximity to the child-it was enough for the observer to understand the situation.The observer could also move around as needed.
All cycles included social orientation and the main object of attention and contact, but many other things, such as the child's emotion and engagement, were also recorded in each observing cycle.The definition did not take into account the moral or positive/negative aspects of social orientation or other behaviour, however.
The observers recorded their observations on tablets.In terms of the main object of attention, the observer determines what kind of object the child is focusing their attention on, whether non-social, adult, another child, several children or overall situation.When the main object of attention is categorised as non-social, there is no immediate contact with other people, but the attention is focused on non-social objects, such as toys, food or themselves.When the child's main object of attention is an adult, the adult must be the engine of the child's actions, but the situation can include material, other adults and other children as well.To be categorised as another child, the main object of attention requires that the observed child has connection with the other child's experience.The situation can also include material, and the experience does not have to be shared, as the other child can be a play-leader.When two children construct a mutual zone of proximal development, the main object of attention is always another child.The observed child must have contact with and understanding of the groups actions in order to be categorised as having several children as the main object of attention.The child does not need to be part of the group and the situation can include other material.(Reunamo 2020) The overall situation as the main object of attention is not elaborated as it was not included in this research due to its irrelevance.

Participants
The dataset we used for this study included 20,457 observations of 972 six-year-old children from 360 groups of children in 18 municipalities in southern Finland.The municipalities were selected because they themselves wanted to improve ECEC based on research, and many of them have been part of the project since 2010.The exact number of ECEC units is unknown because some of the groups were from the same units.The units were selected by random sampling from all the units in the municipalities as were the groups of children from the selected units.Of the observations 46.6% concerned girls, 52.6% boys and 0.8% other; 25% of the observations concerned children with special educational needs and 13.9% concerned children with at least one parent from an immigrant background.The children had spent 22.64 months in ECEC on average (std. dev. = 19.67).The average number of children in the groups was 18.73 (std.dev.= 4.61) and the average number in units 71.07 (std.dev.= 42.06).

Analysis
The data were analysed with IBM SPSS Statistics 27 software with cross-tabulation function.For the cross-tabulations, we formed a new variable from the existing ones and named it years of attendance in ECEC.The two main variables used in the cross-tabulations with the attendance variable were social orientation and the child's main object of attention and contact.For more specific results, the variables child's gender and closest social child contact were added.Child's gender was only used in three-way cross-tabulations with the main variables.The category 'other' from the child's gender variable is not examined because there were so few observations in this category.Before doing the cross-tabulations, observations of children under six years of age and observations during naptime were ruled out with 'select cases'.

Ethical considerations and reliability
The research conduct and measures were approved by the University of Helsinki Ethical Review Board in the Humanities and Social and Behavioural Sciences.The observations could not be traced back to any individuals or units, because the children, groups of children, ECEC units and municipalities were coded with numbers.The data were stored in cloud service.Pseudonymised personal data could not be connected to a specific child afterwards.Only the parents, the educators and the observer (who was a kindergarten teacher from another ECEC unit) knew the identity of the participating children and this information was not forwarded with the data.During the observation situations, group's educators worked with the children as usual taking care of their well-being.The observer had no contact with the children.The participating cities were fully debriefed but did not have access to the data for security reasons.
Parental consent was requested through a letter of consent, which included the possibility to opt out of the study.At this stage, approximately 90% of parents gave their consent.
There were more than 200 observers altogether.The reliability of the observation was tested with paired observation, where two observers observed the same child at the same time without knowing each other's classifications.The reliability for social orientation was fair (Cohen's kappa 40.5%) (CI 35.7%, 45.3%, p > .0005).The reliability for the object of attention was 54.7% (CI 50.1%, 59.3%, p < .0005).The observers were also educational professionals, who had received special training in observation: two webinars, training in kindergartens, and an independently performed online course, where the reliability of observations was tested.Each child was observed approximately 25 times depending on their attendance.Observers did not observe within their own groups of children, and had no connections to the children they were observing, or with the adults conducting non-participative observation of the groups (Grönfors and Vilkka 2011).
The age of the children was limited to 6-year-olds so that all the observed children had an equal opportunity to have spent the same time in ECEC.The observations from nap time were excluded from this research so that these observations would not skew the results.
The Progressive Feedback project has been collecting similar research material for over ten years, so the observational processes have been refined several times.Bigger cities and cities in southern Finland are more prevalent in the sample, which makes the generalisation to the whole of Finland limited.However, the education and care in every ECEC unit are based on the Finnish National Core Curriculum for ECEC 2018 (EDUFI 2019) and Pre-primary Education 2014 (EDUFI 2016), and hence the children that were observed are a representative sample of children in ECEC units in the participating municipalities.

Social orientations and the years spent in ECEC
To begin with, we address the first research question 'How do the years spent in ECEC affect children's social orientations?'The results were very clear for adaptive social orientation, with all attendance categories differing from each other.The longer the child had been in ECEC, the less adaptive orientation they had.The least participative behaviour was exhibited by children that had been in ECEC for less than a year.Dominant social behaviour increased the longer the child had attended ECEC.All the results mentioned above were statistically significant at the 0.05 level.Interestingly, there was no statistically significant difference between attendance categories and the withdrawn social orientation (Results shown in Table 1).The crosstabulation results in the Tables 1-4 are presented as percentages of how much of the time the children were to behave in a certain way.
Child's gender also affected the results as there were some clear differences between girls and boys (Table 2).When the gender of the child was added to the three-way cross-tabulation, the above-mentioned results changed.For girls, the attendance category did not affect the amount of adaptive social orientation, but for boys the results were similar to those previously stated: the longer the boys had attended ECEC, the less adaptive social orientation they exhibited.Similar differences between girls and boys were repeated for participative social orientation: girls were unaffected, but boys became more participative the longer they had attended ECEC.It was also found that dominant behaviour was more typical with girls with four or more years of attendance, while for boys there was no statistically significant difference in dominant behaviour between attendance categories.Girls with four or more years of attendance exhibited the least withdrawn behaviour, but boys were the least withdrawn in the attendance category of more than one but less than four years.All these results were statistically significant at the 0.05 level.

The main object of attention and years spent in ECEC
The second research question was 'How do the years spent in ECEC affect children's main object of attention?' Children with four or more years of attendance had the least non-social and adult-centred attention.Attendance categories did not influence another child as the child's main object of attention, but the children with four or more years of attendance paid more attention to several children than other peers (Table 3).When the additional variable, closest social child contact was combined with the attendance categories in the cross-tabulation, differences could be observed.
Children with four or more years of attendance had the least no-contact behaviour and children with over one but under four years of attendance had the most.All the results mentioned above were statistically significant at the 0.05 level.
The three-way cross-tabulation provided more information about the connection between the attendance categories and the child's main object of attention when the child's gender was added to the analysis (Table 4).Girls had less non-social main object of attention when they had been in ECEC over four years, but for boys, the attendance categories did not affect the number of non-social observations.Boys that had attended ECEC for over four years showed the least adult-centred attention but for girls, there were no statistically meaningful differences within the attendance categories.Both genders seemed to focus their attention on another child similarly, with no differences between the attendance categories.Differences can also be observed when looking at the category of several  children: Girls with four or more years of attendance in ECEC centred their attention to several children more often than girls with more than one but less than four years of attendance.For boys, this difference was not statistically significant, but the difference between less than one year of attendance and four or more years of attendance is, boys with four or more years of attendance in ECEC focused their attention on many children more often.

Discussion
This research addressed the connection between years spent in ECEC and children's social behaviour, and provides new insights into how children's social behaviour evolves during their early years.This study adds a dimension to the research on social relations by looking at the long-term effects of ECEC.The results also serve as a reminder that children's social behavioural patterns are not permanent, but can change as the children grow up and encounter different environments and other factors that affect their development.Some changes have occurred in ECEC in Finland in the last few years.For example, the subjective right to attend ECEC was restored in 2020 (Ministry of Education and Culture 2019) and the trial for two-year mandatory pre-primary education started in August 2021 (Ministry of Education and Culture 2021).Among other things, these changes have led to a social debate on the importance of ECEC for children's development and well-being.In Finland, it has traditionally been popular to take care of children at home, and the participation rate in ECEC for children aged three to five is below the OECD average (OECD 2017).This has also been supported by the Finnish child home care allowance.With recent political decisions promoting children's participation in ECEC, much research is needed to provide more information on the long-term effects, risks, and benefits of ECEC.Further research could focus more on the connection between social behaviour and years spent in ECEC, for example by adding immigrant background, children's special educational needs, or the family's economical background to the equation.In any case, extensive research is needed to provide more reliable and generalisable results on how the years spent in ECEC affect children's social behaviour and development in general.One particularly interesting aspect considering children's social behaviour and development are the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing social restrictions: many young children may have experienced peer contacts much later than infants usually do, and children might have spent less time in ECEC in general, especially in a global context.
This study provides one perspective on how attendance in ECEC affects children.According to the results, it is probable that the years spent in ECEC have an impact on children's social behaviour, namely on their social orientations and who pay attention to and establish contact with.Some similarities with previous research can also be proposed.The results show that the children who have spent the most years in ECEC are more participative and pay attention to several children more than others.It seems that children who have spent the most years in ECEC have similar main objects of attention as the children with no special educational needs in the research by Kuutti et al. (2021).
The increase in participative orientation might be the most notable result of this research, as ensuring children's participation has been a trending topic in education and care in Finland for some time (see EDUFI 2016; EDUFI 2019; Karila 2016).These results are in line with the old Froebelian tradition of children developing an understanding of their own potentialities.It is easier to ensure that every child has the same opportunities to participate and develop their participatory skills when we know who might need the most support, which also applies to social development in general.Interestingly, girls who had attended for less than a year had little dominant orientation, but girls who had attended for more than four years had as much dominant orientation as boys.It seems that these girls in particular had found their own will and were free to express themselves.While this research provides one perspective on the conversation about the effects of ECEC, in the bigger picture it is essential to remember that no one study alone can ensure that attending ECEC is crucial for a child's development.

Study limitations
There are some limitations to the interpretation of the results and implementation of the research.The connection between variables and years of attendance in ECEC can be discussed, but no causality can be confirmed.It has been noted in this research that other matters, such as economic background, may affect the results.The observations were the only way to assess children's behaviour, no interviews were conducted with the children for example.The observers were trained to observe strictly according to the observation instructions, ignoring the way that national guidelines and educational theories view action and sociality in ECEC.The importance of randomness was also emphasised in the instructions and the possible variation in the observational data was managed through comprehensive sampling among other things.
According to these results, applications of ECEC policy and practice favour starting early education as soon as possible, because children's open and agentive social orientations increase, and their peer relations get stronger.However, the impact of cultural differences cannot be ruled out.Moreover, the results of Finnish early education may not be the same in different countries and cultures.The observation measure has also been used in Taiwan, for example (see https://blogs.helsinki.fi/orientate/category/taiwan/),but there are cultural differences.More research is needed to acquire global results.In this study, the quality of ECEC has not been assessed and therefore the quality may vary from one unit to another, despite national, binding guidelines for ECEC in Finland.
It is important to remember that the reasons behind children's actions were not taken into consideration.Withdrawn behaviour, for example, can be caused by peer rejection or because the child prefers solitude, among other things (Chen 2015).No social orientations is automatically positive or negative behaviour, for example, dominant social orientation might sound negative, but it also includes skilful social behaviour (Reunamo et al. 2013).Hence, the results only indicate the extent to which this particular behaviour occurs, but not whether it is positive or negative.

Table 1 .
Cross-tabulation of children's social orientation and years of attendance in ECEC.
Notes: Each subscript letter denotes a subset of years of attendance in ECEC categories whose column proportions do not differ significantly from each other at the .05level.

Table 2 .
Cross-tabulation of children's social orientation, years of attendance in ECEC, and gender.Each subscript letter denotes a subset of years of attendance in ECEC categories whose column proportions do not differ significantly from each other at the .05level.

Table 3 .
Crosstabulation of the children's main object of attention and contact and years of attendance in ECEC.Each subscript letter denotes a subset of years of attendance in ECEC categories whose column proportions do not differ significantly from each other at the .05level.

Table 4 .
Crosstabulation of the children's main object of attention and contact, years of attendance in ECEC and gender.Each subscript letter denotes a subset of years of attendance in ECEC categories whose column proportions do not differ significantly from each other at the .05level.