Dr. Kaarina Marjanen is a specialist of early childhood music education, with music and language integration and behavior, and artistic learning in a dialogue with wellbeing. Her education and professional qualifications include those of a kindergarten teacher (1980), an early childhood music teacher (1995), and a one subject music teacher (Master of Arts, 1999). Kaarina is also a Licentiate of Philosophy (2005) and a Doctor of Philosophy (2009). She is a member of EAPRIL, SIG Prime, CREAT, ISME, ECME, CCE Finland, and Teosto/NCB Finland.

Her working life career includes experiences in many Finnish universities, with international collaboration, focused on professional education development. Development of a model called “Multisensory Musical Design (MMD)” has been Kaarina’s latest interest. Her approach to musical integration derives from learning processes, with multimodal sense-based connections, emotions and transversal nature, as a ground for arts-integration. Presently Kaarina is constructing research approaches within her networks, to defense the status of music in Western societies, as a tool for higher education, to gain evidence of power of music in learning and education, as defined in early childhood.

Finnish (mother tongue), English (strong), Swedish (good), French and German (basics)

Kaarina’s licentiate (2005) target was the degree program for early childhood music teacher / music pedagogue (UAS), and the success of the training to respond to the needs of the working life. According to the results, it was pointed out that the level of training was very high when looking at the positions for those teachers to work among, and their working circumstances, expectations and the holistic framework of the work. The training program has of course changed after 2005, among other music educational changes. It would be important and interesting, however, to observe the possibilities to adopt the qualification and training for the best interests and benefiting of general early childhood education, and to derive towards the targets to strengthen early childhood music education among day care.

At her doctorate (2009) Kaarina Marjanen focused in musical interaction, with investigations of the connections of pre- and postnatal music education with early mother-child interaction. According to the results, especially the impact of prenatal musical experiences for the postnatal interaction behavior turned out to be of a great significance, and lead Kaarina to continue towards many kinds of new doors. She then investigated 8-12-year-olds experiences of wellbeing as a postdoctoral researcher (Marjanen & Poikolainen 2012), and the connections of music and languages (The European Music Portfolio – A Creative Way into Languages, EMP-L 2009-2012), and the Carnival of the Animals -research (2013 and onwards), connecting with transversal learning and professional development through music, musical and music-integrated learning, and music and arts in early childhood teacher training (these all from 2013 on).