The participants of the study

Overall 10 municipalities participated in the study. The four key participant groups in the study responsible for early childhood services in municipalities were employed as either members of municipal committees, ECE leaders, centre direc-tors, or teachers. These stakeholders influence the policy and practices of ECE leadership in local communities. The range of group composition in each focus group discussion varied between 2–11 persons (Table 2).

The members of the municipal committees were residents of the community, and were not necessarily involved in ECE services. They were selected to serve for four years. Municipal committees represent the residents of their municipality in local decision-making. Even though the member of the municipal committee is a representative of the municipal residents, it is expected that when making decisions the committee member has to take into account the municipality as a whole (Niiranen et al., 2013). The municipal committee members are mainly re-sponsible for the funding of ECE services. They also determine the service charge, Table 2: Number of participants involved in the study

Participant Number of municipalities Number of individuals who Range of the participants group involved in the study participated in the study between municipalities Members of

municipal committees 4 37 8–10

The ECE leaders 10 57 2–9

Centre directors 9 75 3–11

Teachers 9 75 5–10

child-care centre accommodation arrangements, and guidelines for local ECE curriculum in co-operation with the ECE leaders.

ECE leaders are responsible for the provision of ECE services, as well as lead-ing, coordinatlead-ing, and developing the functions of ECE services. ECE leaders are employed in the municipality as professionals eligible to be municipal civil serv-ants. ECE leaders are mainly responsible for arranging the ECE services within the municipality and ensuring that ECE centres meet the requirements of the national ECE laws and local policies. These stakeholders were influential in ECE decision-making and administration of their local communities. In general, each ECE leader’s group consisted of the employed municipal ECE managers, a sector leader, and the development, personnel, and financial managers selected for the study.

ECE centre directors are responsible for ECE centres, family day care units, and open ECE services. One director is often responsible for multiple centres and ECE programs. Teachers work with children in different age groups. The teachers were responsible for working with small groups of children in different age groups such as 0- to 2-year-olds, 3- to 5-year-olds, and 6- to 7-year-olds.

Early childhood staff consists of multi-professional teams with different kinds of qualifications. Early childhood teachers are required to have a degree of Bach-elor of Education from a university, or a BachBach-elor of Social Services from a univer-sity of Applied Sciences. Additional staff members in a group are required to have a secondary-level degree as a practical or child care nurse. The composition of the team members varies between the municipalities. The teams can have one to two early childhood teachers (lastentarhanopettaja) and one to two or more practical or childcare nurses (lastenhoitaja). The adult-child ratio is 1:4 for children under the age of 3, and 1:7 for 3- to 7-year-olds (Asetus lasten päivähoidosta 239/1973).

In this study, the teachers’ group composition included varying qualifications. In Table 3, a summary of the participants and methods in each article is presented.

Selection of the municipalities that participated in the research articles was made according to their locations in Finland. Selecting a range of locations was important for providing a cross-section of municipalities located throughout Finland. Similarly, as the size of the municipality is an influential factor in the organisation of leadership, the representativeness of a variety of sizes was consid-ered significant in the selection of the municipalities. The municipality sizes could vary from 10,000 to few hundred thousand residents. The organisation of ECE leadership varied between the municipalities mostly based on the composition of ECE leaders.

Each municipality selected the people who participated in the focus group discussions and coordinated their participation. The contact persons in the mu-nicipalities selected the appropriate individuals to participate in the study. These

contact persons were used in the selection because municipal organisations vary in Finland, thus requiring a person to be familiar with the particular municipality for the selection. The goal was to convene a maximum of 10 people in each group.

The number of participants remained low in the ECE leaders’ and centre direc-tors’ groups in small municipalities. Overall, 32 focus groups were conducted for this study.

Municipalities were selected for this study from the original data according to their administrating of ECE in the sector of Educational Affairs and their repre-sentativeness of a variety of municipality sizes and locations in Finland. In addi-tion, a high quality of data recording was an essential criterion for selection of the municipalities that participated in the study.

Name of the

Table 3: Summary of the participants, research questions, and methods of the research articles

Research findings Article 4 directors and Teachers in six municipalities

How do ECE leaders, centre directors, and ECE teachers

Phase one: Analysis of the substantive content of the discussions among stakeholder groups by qualitative content analysis (Tuomi & Sarajärvi, 2009)

Phase two: Cross-group examination

The selected municipalities varied between the research articles. There was some overlap between the research articles in terms of the municipalities that participated in the studies, that is, the data from some municipalities was used in several articles. However, all four stakeholder groups were not involved simultane-ously in any of the articles.