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training of cognitive skills. They both use stories as a tool to create imaginary worlds.
LEGO has adopted the concept of “serious play” in order to emphasise that their
products promote serious learning in business and develop learning motivation as
well. “LEGO SERIOUS PLay is a radical, innovative, ex­periential process designed to
enhance business performance. It is based on the belief that everyone can contribute
to the discussion, the decisions and the outcome.” (Lego: Serious play, 2006). Positive
evaluation of the importance of narratives, play and imagination is not based on
the goal of enhancing the quality of early education, but on economic interests and
profit. Much more can be done with the systematic use of narrative learning in early
education.
The need for a child-centred approach is stated in Nordic core curricula of early
education, but the concept of learning is still academically oriented. Curricula
set democratic values and children’s best interests as their cornerstone, but many
educators know in advance what is best for children and what must be learned. For
ex­ample, the new Finnish early education guidelines state that play should be present
in all children’s activities, but specific subject matter orientations should also be
taught. In other words, child-centred narrative learning in play is not trusted because
play operates on children’s initiatives. an illustration of this problem is a classroom
teacher who participated in our narrative project using The Little Prince. The project
presented subject matter knowledge and assignments embedded in the dramatised
story of The Little Prince. Our university students in school practice played the roles in
the story. The teacher decided to control what the learning results of the project would
be and gave the test from the previous year to the children. The results were clearly
better than in his “normal teaching”, but the children got ex­tra homework because
“they were just role-playing”.
Narrat­ive learning
Linear ex­planatory instruction connected to cognitive testing misses the essence of
early learning and its quality. The results can be measured and compared, but they
do not reveal the final purpose of early education. Quality assessment of early years’
service delivery is only an intermediate indicator of the possibility of fulfilling the pur-
pose of early education. This purpose is child development. Quality service is not an
end as such, but it should have developmental effects as with all teaching. It may be
difficult to agree on what changes indicate development and how these changes can
be attained.
The first obstacle for common understanding of development is the long tradition
of limiting development to individual phenomena. any individual change can be
used as an indicator of child development and small changes like a new word in a
child’s vocabulary can mark development. Vygotsky’s ideas about child develop-
ment are still relevant and bring a new perspective to learning and developmental
change (Vygotsky 1977, 1978, 1987, 1991, 2004). He proposed that we should focus on
qualitative changes in children’s activity. His first unit of development was limited
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