Description of research and teaching

I currently work as a university lecturer at the department of educational sciences. I teach primarily (but not solely) courses connected to our early childhood education and care teacher program. I currently oversee the basic practicum of the program and am in charge of teacher mentoring on the bachelor degree level. I also oversee the first course focusing on educational research (‘Toward research’) for each of the department’s programs. In addition, I teach on courses which focus on primary education and on language and interaction. I also supervise bachelor level thesis and practicums. 

My research focuses currently on early childhood sleep practices and culture and the individual, collective and societal level learning and development connected to them. In addition I research children’s projects, how they develop and the learning their creation and management entail for the children from their perspective. Both of these lines of investigation stem from my dissertation research which focused on children’s sense of agency and my interest in children’s agency, and how it can be supported in their everyday day life across contexts. I discovered children’s projects as a research focus during my Northwestern University post-doc period. Through my research I discovered that as an activity children’s projects could develop well beyond their initial interests, ideas and the learning environment which fostered them, if supported. With my sleep research, I am attempting to understand how, for example, early childhood sleeping practices impact their sense of their own possibilities to take action. My research builds on and attempts to further develop cultural-historical activity theory.

Alongside my teaching and research work I’ve shared the leadership of the early childhood education and care program (fall 2023- winter 2024) and as of 1.1 2025 oversee and lead the department’s bachelor level programs. I have also served on the vice dean’s research advisory board for several years. In addition, I am one of the current secretaries of the cultural-historical activity theory SIG at the Finnish Educational Research Association and the country representative for Finland at ISCAR.