Encountering diversity: Educator’s ways in mediating toddler’s inclusion in the Finnish early childhood classroom

This study explores educator-child interactions and their relationship with educators’ approaches to diversity and inclusion during the mealtimes in Finnish early childhood education and care. Based on video-recordings of mealtimes, a mixed-method approach was adopted to analyze 539 moments of educator-child interactions. The results suggest diverse educator-child interaction patterns mediating children’s inclusion. In educator-child interactions, children’s diverse agency for participation is considered by educators. Educators’ approaches to diversity suggest their open attitudes towards inclusion which are not limited to ethnicity but relate to children’s individual needs. During moments of tension within educator-child interactions, children’s agency contributes to transform educators’ attitudes towards inclusion. However, there seems to be a tendency to understand equality as uniformity which contradicts the core principle of equity of social justice in multicultural inclusive education.