This article examines the Finnish day-care centre out of a neo-WeberianBourdieuan frame of reference. The leading idea is that the day-care centre field is continuously shaping as a result of both inner struggles and struggles with other fields. The state, the education system, and trade unions act as the dealers of professional playing cards. Struggles are fought with strategies of social closure over capitals and positions. The study aims at not only describing the object but at understanding the dynamics involved.

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This paper focuses on child-initiated pedagogy that is based on the process of coconstruction of learning experiences between children, adults and the environment, being part of longitudinal research project that analyses child-initiated pedagogies in formal early years settings with 3-6-year-old children. Drawing on an ethnographic approach this paper explores children's own views of the relationships between their own and adults' decisions. Twenty-four participating teachers, in 14 different early years settings in three countries (Finland, Estonia and England) used interviews with puppets and video methodologies to document children's views on how decisions are reached, what kinds of things are decided, and who decides. The data suggest that children embrace the feel of control. They also acknowledge, at a level, acting and taking control within boundaries. Given an opportunity, the children are skilful in sharing the responsibility of control with peers and adults.

The concept of pedagogy is the key to understanding pedagogy in early childhood education (ECE) in the Nordic countries, which are known for their high quality of life and education. However, in ECE, there are several different approaches toward pedagogy and it can be said that pedagogy is a multidimensional and dynamic concept. In this paper, the different approaches to pedagogy are defined and reconceptualized through an integrative literature analysis focusing on scientific papers and research reports of the concept. Five approaches to pedagogy were constructed: pedagogy through interaction, pedagogy through scaffolding, pedagogy through didactics, pedagogy through expertise, and pedagogy through future orientation. The identified tensions and elements within the five approaches are presented. Finally, the shared elements among these pedagogical approaches are presented in a dynamic model.