Meidän piti lähteä (We Had to Leave, 2018) is a wordless picturebook by the Finnish author Sanna Pelliccioni. It is a work of 41 pages, most of which are formed from pairs of images with matching colours produced in acrylic. It starts with images of a family enjoying their life, but shifts to images of aeroplanes bombing a city, a journey over the sea to a place where people build snowmen: the implied narrative is that of a family caught up in the recent refugee crisis seeking asylum in Finland. In this article, I examine the literary strategies in narrating the refugee experience in this wordless picturebook. The approach is pedagogical as I ask: How can a picturebook, such as Meidän piti lähteä, give voice to the refugee experience? I also ask whether picturebooks about the refugee experience can teach about empathy, without essentializing the Other. Two not controversial, but differing views related to the notion of “giving voice” frame these questions. While emphasising the pedagogical opportunities, Julia Hope (“One Day” 302), argues that the refugee experiences in children’s literature form “an ideal context for sharing the stories, feelings and fears” that children have experienced, but also expose stereotypes and media myths. On the other hand, Gayatri Spivak famously argued in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988) that, in the context of colonial production, the subaltern has no history and cannot speak. This article situates Meidän piti lähteä, in the midst of these discourses to present wordless picturebooks as an arena for diverse narratives about refugees, which have the potential to support empathy, but which may also reinforce stereotypical and tokenistic images of refugees. The analysis suggests that the visual discourse creates an effective narrative, with space for listening. In addition, the article suggests that refugee narratives can foster critical self-reflexivity.

Tarkastelemme tässä artikkelissa varhaiskasvatuksen palvelujärjestelmän yksityistymistä ja selvitämme, millaisesta yhteiskunnallisesta ilmiöstä varhaiskasvatuksen markkinoitumisessa Suomessa on kyse. Markkinoitumisen ymmärrämme sisältävän yleisesti ne prosessit, joissa liiketoiminnan arvot, pyrkimykset ja käytännöt alkavat saada jalansijaa kasvatusinstituutioissa ja niitä koskevassa julkisessa keskustelussa. Analysoimme palvelujärjestelmän yksityistymistä suuntaamalla huomiomme yksityisten päiväkotien määrän ja laadun muutoksiin sekä siihen, miten koulutuksen muuttuva hallinta kytkeytyy palveluiden tuottamiseen. Hyödynnämme tutkimusaineistona tilastoja ja julkisia aineistoja varhaiskasvatuksen palvelujärjestelmistä. Hallinnan viitekehys nostaa esille koulutuksen globaalia, kansallista ja paikallista hallintaa sekä optimoinnin ja tehostamisen vaikutuksia kasvatuksen ja koulutuksen järjestämisen ehtoihin ja sisältöihin. Käsittelemme myös jo nyt havaittavissa olevia, mutta myös mahdollisia tulevia kehityssuuntauksia.

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Neo-liberal values affect early childhood education through the production of specific teacher subjectivities. These subjectivities are connected not only to the logic of competition, but also to competing definitions of worth, trust and values, as demonstrated by data. Neo-liberal values of accountability are also intertwined with the traditional discourse of child-centred learning. This study contributes to research concerning early childhood education and care staff’s professionalism by focusing on the effects of the commercialization of early childhood education and care teachers’ understanding of their work. With survey data (161 responses) collected from the five largest municipalities in Finland, the authors examine the reasoning that early childhood education and care staff provide for choosing commercial as well as non-commercial digital applications, licensed programmes and ready-made learning materials. The research is highly topical since the number of innovations targeted at early childhood education and care is increasing. Digitalization opens new ways for the privatization and marketization of education by introducing appealing commercially produced programmes and materials. In this study, the authors show how the advertising of these innovations as providing ‘easy solutions’ to improve either children's learning or early childhood education and care practitioners’ working time has become a discourse through which teachers and other staff members evaluate their work and their professionalism. In addition, the authors suggest that Finnish early childhood education and care practitioners seem to have internalized the pressure to enhance efficiency and accountability in early childhood education and care.