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Purpose The new Finnish National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (2018) strongly highlights pedagogical knowledge and practice, demanding teachers to develop their pedagogical thinking, evaluation, judgment, and operating culture. Since ethics is viewed as vital characteristics of the teaching profession, our objective is to make these complex ethical issues more visible to be subject to democratic discussion and change. Design/Approach/Methods The framework comprises a broad theory base of codes of ethics and professional codes of ethics of teaching. The research materials were national curricula of early childhood education and care (ECEC)- and preprimary education. The eight-step qualitative analysis process was applied to identify and shed light on the codes of ethics laying the foundations for purposeful and ethical early childhood education (ECE) teacher. Findings The results indicate that through both theoretical lenses, the Finnish ECEC curricula comprise several ethical codes. For the future purposeful ECE teachers as ethical professionals, the results raise questions for further discussion. Particularly, issues related to the ethics of care, intellectual freedom, inquiry stance, and professional competence, and diversity may further enhance our ECEC curricula. Originality/Value During recent decades, the ethics concerning ECEC have gained increasing global attention. Particularly, there is a large international consensus considering ECEC as a prominent policy equalizing opportunities.

Recognizing one’s own playfulness is important for early childhood education (ECE) teachers, who are responsible for organizing and implementing child-initiated pedagogy in kindergarten. Playfulness research has focused on children’s play and playfulness in workplaces, but playfulness as a part of ECE teachers’ pedagogical orientation and adaptive expertise is rarely studied. Using multiple playfulness measurements, first- and third-year pre-service ECE teachers’ (n = 208) self-reported playfulness was examined. Correlation coefficients and t-tests were performed to examine the connections between the facets of playfulness, adaptiveness and inquisitiveness. The results of the study show that, although there were no statistically significant differences among the groups, they had different orientations towards playfulness. As their education proceeds, pre-service teachers should be able to integrate theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge to focus on children’s needs and the quality of interaction with and among children and to take steps towards adaptive expertise. Additional research is needed to explore how teachers and pre-service teachers can learn playfulness as a part of their pedagogical expertise. The results are implementable for designing, developing and evaluating ECE teacher education.

Play and playfulness are understood as basic and vital elements of early childhood education (ECE), and together with playful pedagogies, they perform a central role in Finnish ECE. In multidisciplinary research, children’s learning is generally understood through the inquiring process of play. However, playfulness, as opposed to play, has received relatively little scholarly attention, and educators’ use of playfulness has received even less (Pinchover, 2017). Playfulness is a vital part of life for both adults and children. At the same time, teachers’ behavior can influence the playfulness of a child; moreover, teachers’ own playfulness is critical for establishing warm and secure relationships with children. As such, the aim of this research was to explore pre-service teachers’ (PsTs’) understanding of agentic playfulness, particularly in the ECE context. Study participants included 159 PsTs; study data were gathered from PsTs’ written reflections regarding the use of playfulness in their future work. The results of qualitative analyses showed that the PsTs’ agentic playfulness mirrored a relational and tensious space consisting of three domains: teacher?25 initiated agentic playfulness, child-centered agentic playfulness, and community shared agentic playfulness. Each domain revealed dimensions of the nature of PsTs’ mindset and the orientation of their agentic playfulness. The results are discussed in relation to pedagogization of play, relational pedagogy community of learnes, and teacher education supporting and developing future ECE teachers’ agentic playfulness.