Administrative decisions on child support in early childhood education and care
Andrew Agbaje (andrew.agbaje@uef.fi)
Prof. Agbaje is an award-winning physician and professor (associate) of clinical epidemiology and child health who currently investigates causal relationships of aerobic fitness, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, body composition, insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia, and metabolic syndrome with arterial, cardiac, liver, and kidney structure and function from childhood through young adulthood.
He discovered arterial stiffness as a novel risk factor for paediatric obesity and insulin resistance, identified adolescence as the critical time to interrupt fat mass-insulin resistance pathologic cycle, and demonstrated light-intensity physical activity as a highly effective antidote for reversing excessive fat deposit induced by childhood sedentariness. Recently, he discovered waist-to-height ratio as a specific surrogate for fat mass but not muscle mass that could replace BMI in assessing childhood obesity. Subsequently, he was interviewed LIVE on BBC World News TV to discuss the novel findings.
As of September/October 2023, two of Prof. Agbaje’s publications were placed in the Top 1% highly cited paper in the academic field of Clinical Medicine, while a third publication was placed in the Top 1% highly cited paper in the academic field of Biology & Biochemistry by Clarivate’s Web of Science.
He has a first authored paper in Nature Communications and was interviewed LIVE on BBC World Service Radio Newsday programme on 15th Dec 2023, BBC Radio Devon on 16th Jan 2024, and BBC World News LIVE TV programme on 14th March 2024. The University of Eastern Finland recently recorded a podcast interview of his latest findings as well as a video.
The Endocrine Society in US, recently recorded a podcast interview of his research and discussed his research in the prestigious Endocrine Magazine March 2024 edition. He was recently interviewed by the European Association for the Study of Obesity, a federation of 36 European countries’ professional associations.
His research has received extensive press coverage, with over 2,000 media mentions in 2022 and 2023 in outlets such as BBC, CNN, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, Mirror, BILD, Infobae, Yahoo Lifestyle, Yahoo Sport, US News & World report, DocCheck, MSN, WebMD, Medscape, The Conversation, Jerusalem Post, Helsingin Sanomat, etc, potentially reaching a global audience of more than 4.5 billion. The equivalent advertising value of these news articles is more than 30 million US dollars.
He is the principal investigator of the urFIT-child research group and has strong collaboration with world-renowned pediatricians, exercise physiologists, epidemiologists, and adult clinicians in Canada, US, UK, Germany, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, etc.
He has received several scientific excellence awards including the prestigious EASO-Novo Nordisk Foundation for New Investigator Award in Childhood Obesity with a 300,000 Danish Kroner (~40,000 euro) prize. Other awards are the American Heart Association’s Elizabeth Barrett-Connor Research Award in Epidemiology and Prevention (once), Jeremiah and Rose Stamler Research Award (twice), and Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award (thrice).
He co-authored an American Heart Association Scientific Statement on Environmental Exposures and Pediatric Cardiology, published in Circulation. He had a video discussion of the Scientific Statement. He was an invited guest speaker to the largest mother and child center in Canada – CHU Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital Center, Canada in March 2023 to speak on the determinants of carotid intima-media thickness and arterial stiffness in pediatrics.
He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Children’s Health and Exercise Research Centre (CHERC), Department of Public Health and Sports Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
He was recently appointed an Associate Editor in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle (JCSM). He serves on the editorial board of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (ATVB), and mentors early career editorial board members. He also serves on the editorial board of Pediatric Exercise Science journal.
He is an elected Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC) and an elected Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA). These titles of honour, symbol of excellence and lifetime achievement recognizes his significant contribution to cardiovascular field in Europe and America.
He is an expert advisor to the World Health Organization’s task force on preventing childhood obesity.
Primary email is andrew.agbaje@uef.fi
Secondary email is a.agbaje@exeter.ac.uk
Cloneria Jatileni (cloneria.jatileni@uef.fi)
I facilitate the collaborations between the University of Eastern Finland’s department of teacher education and our partner universities in the global north and south. In this collaboration, we work with the departments of education at the University of Turku in Finland, the University of Namibia in Namibia, and Stadio Higher Education in South Africa. Generally, I am involved in the GINTL African collaborations with UEF on educational research. My work includes applying for funding on GINTL projects at UEF and identifying possible research areas. Our research areas are teacher education/training, digital learning, early childhood education and educational policies. I am also a doctoral student at UEF. My dissertation focuses on digital learning for Mathematics and policy development in Namibian basic education.
Ismo Pellikka (ismo.pellikka@uef.fi)
I teach in the basic, subject and advanced courses in classroom teacher education and supervise Bachelor’s theses. In class teacher training, I am involved in the implementation of the evangelical religion course, as well as the history and social studies courses. I am responsible for the pedagogy of life-religious studies course. In early childhood education, I am responsible for the unit on “Similar and different humans together” (consisting of moral education and development, history education and religious & multicultural education). I am very happy to lecture on Finnish educational system and school life for our exchange student from all over the world.
I am also the academic supervisor of the Pedagogy and Teaching for Sustainability Master´s Degree.
Johanna Heikka (johanna.heikka@uef.fi)
I work in early childhood education as a teacher of pedagogy, leadership and research methods. In addition, I supervise internships and theses. I am responsible for the minor subject studies of Educational leadership. My research interest focus on holistic activation on children’s learning and development, the professionalism of early childhood education teachers, pedagogical leadership and quality of early childhood education.
Jouko Heikkinen (jouko.heikkinen@uef.fi)
Teaching tasks in primary school teacher, early childhood education teacher and subject teacher training.
Lotta Aavikko (lotta.aavikko@uef.fi)
I am a PhD and project researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. My research interests include promoting inclusion in society, both in my dissertation from the perspective of digital inclusion of older people and people with developmental disabilities, and in various projects, for example on support for children in early childhood education and digital literacy of teachers. Previously I have analysed focus group interviews with peer tutors in digital literacy for older people, conducted observational research on digital support network workshops, and collected unique material from peer tutors in digital literacy for people with developmental disabilities remotely, using AAC support methods. Lastly, I interviewed peer tutors of digital literacy for older people in individual and pair interviews in Teams as part of a project we conducted with the Centre of Excellence in Ageing and Care Research (CoE AgeCare) at the University of Jyväskylä.
Marja Syrjämäki (marja.syrjamaki@uef.fi)
My area of responsibility in the special pedagogy subject is early childhood special education teacher training: thesis and practical training and support for professional growth. My research interests focus on the structures of the child’s support and on the sensitive pedagogy that strengthens peer interaction between all children. The new research area is demanding support in early childhood education and care.
Research Gate
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marja-Syrjaemaeki/research
Noora Heiskanen (noora.heiskanen@uef.fi)
Noora studies themes related to special education, in particular early childhood special education (planning, documentation and evaluation of support, work of a special education teacher in early childhood education and care, behavior support, participation). Noora is an expert in early childhood special education and cooperates both nationally and internationally in research on the topic and has also extensively networked with societal actors. Noora’s duties include research, teaching, guidance and societal activities. In 2020-2021, Noora has led a large-scale national project to study support and inclusion practices in early childhood education and care commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Culture. At the moment, he leads the research project about administrative decisions on child’s support in early childhood education and care as well as Vaka-Tuvet project. In addition, Noora is a member of the Finnish Educational Society’s Early Childhood Education and Early Childhood Special Education (VAKAe) theme group and the editorial board of Barn – Forskning om barn og barndom i Norde. He is an alternate member of the Board of the Society for Childhood Studies. Noora has early childhood special education teacher qualification and she has worked in teaching positions in early childhood education, secondary education and university.