I work as a senior university lecturer at the dempartment of education (discipline of special education).
My research focuses on examining teacher-child interaction in the context of early childhood education and care (ECEC) and primary education. I’m particularly interested in understanding how the characteristics and quality of early teacher-child interaction are associated with children’s learning and well-being, and how teachers’ characteristics and experiences shape the interactions in the classrooms. I'm also interested to understand the role that home environment (jointly and independently with ECEC and school) plays for the child development. Through EarlyMath project my research hase focuses on examining the mechanisms through which ECEC and home learning environments can contribute to children's math skills in toddlerhood and in preschool. At broader level, I aim to better understand the bidirectional and dynamic nature of teacher-child interactions and its association with individual learning in the context of ECEC.
I’m the responsible researcher of the Preschool sample substudy in the ERC funded EarlyMath-project (2021–2026, PI Minna Torppa) and in the HyMy-study (2025–2027) which aims to examine staff well-being and the cultures of compassion in ECEC. I'm the primary investigator of the Interaction, development and Learning (VUOKKO) – follow-up-study (2015–2025). I'm also an expert in the eTALE Africa 2 -project (Niilo Mäki Institute, 2023–2026), focusing on developing contents of ECEC and math to support teacher education in sub-Saharan Africa and a research group member in CRITICAL -project (STN, 2020-2026) and With Sensitive Eyes -eyetracking research project.
