| 1. |
- Elfström, Ingela, 1954-
(författare)
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Uppföljning och utvärdering för förändring : pedagogisk dokumentation som grund för kontinuerlig verksamhetsutveckling och systematiskt kvalitetsarbete i förskolan
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of the study is to examine, in relation to the curriculum for the Swedish preschool demands of assessment, evaluation and documentation what kind of knowledge that becomes possible through the use of pedagogical documentation, and how this knowledge answers to expectations of development of content, form and organisation of the early childhood educational context. Another purpose is to examine what a post-pragmatic perspective and an immanent idea of evaluation can imply for the two-folded task of the preschool: the societal reproduction of knowledge and the staging of possibilities for children’s own production of knowledge. Three theoretical perspectives have been used: curriculum theory, post-structural theory and an immanent philosophical perspective. Curriculum theory points out that it is essential to use and develop perspectives and methods of evaluation that relates to the goals of the preschool as tools for evaluation govern and shape both questions and analysis. The main study here is directed towards examining pedagogical documentation through an empirical study of one preschool’s use of pedagogical documentation during one year. When dealing with the empirical material my intention has been to make visible both kind of learning processes that this study interprets that the curriculum prescribes. Therefore one method used where curriculum theory and descriptions and categorisations as a part of a discursive analysis of how teachers use pedagogical documentation together with the children and in their planning-sessions. The second method consists of an immanent following up of the rhizomatic web of threads that appear and transform through the practice and where pedagogical documentation is part of the relational field of potentiality.
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| 2. |
- Hammarström-Lewenhagen, Birgitta, 1951-
(författare)
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Den unika möjligheten - en studie av den svenska förskolemodellen 1968-1998
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Swedish preschool-model interlaces care, nurturing and learning and is organised to solve twin functions; providing children a playbased learning-environment and enabling parents to combine parenthood with work.The model was developed within the social sector then incorporated into the educational system 1998. This shift and the model´s “unique characteristics” praised by OECD formed the point of departure for this study.The aim of the thesis is to describe and analyse the discussions and negotiations shaping the Swedish preschool-model during 1968-1998. The research questions address: discursive themes; actors involved; governmental intentions; claims about the preschool´s task, pedagogical content and the preschool´s institutional identity and relationship to the institutions: social service, school and family. The study utilized abductive textual analysis inspired by discourse analysis and narrative approaches. Main text sources are: official reports, bills, steering documents, the preschool teachers´ periodical 1968 -1998 and a media debate.The results illuminate preschool-teachers´ struggle for a pedagogical identity and the construction of the educareconcept as a flexible and pragmatic solution to several societal interests and values.Governmental intentions concerning equality, emancipation and democratization have had great influence on the process in combination with a recurring theme about a revised preschool pedagogy with a strengthened focus on children´s learning. Political efforts to foster a preschool for all in a future are identified and described as one of the main discursive themes. Different standpoints about earlier school start are analyzed. The overall result is that the framework and core features of the model laid down by the National Commission on Child care still has a great impact on the launched syllabus (Lpfö) in the end of the period as on the curriculum in a broader sense.
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| 3. |
- Blomdahl, Eva, 1953-
(författare)
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Teknik i skolan : en studie av teknikundervisning för yngre skolbarn
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main purpose of this study is to find out how technology as a school subject is formed into pedagogical action. Issues addressed are: – How does teaching in the school subject of technology differ in terms of content and process? – How do frame factors influence teaching in technology? As analytic tools, concepts from philosophical thought on technology and education as well as frame factor theory are used to throw light on the way technology education takes shape in the practices of two primary school teachers. The philosophical concepts employed and developed have been inspired by the thinking of Martin Heidegger and John Dewey. These con-cepts are “place” and “shaping of technology,” where the shaping of tech-no¬logy involves the following phases: formulation of the assignment, analysis, visualization/construction and evaluation/reflection. The basic questions are investigated in two case studies over a period of one year. Data is collected based on ethnographic methods and consists of observations, video recordings, documentation in the form of teachers’ diaries as well as pupils’ work, taped interviews with pupils, and interviews with the two teachers both before and after the project was finished. The overall results of the study show that the two teachers, to a different degree, use place, e.g. they try to use the children’s own experiences and the surrounding environment as a starting point in their teaching. They try to organize their teaching as a process of knowledge construction instead of as a process of transmission. In that process, different forms of represen¬tation are used, such as sketches, model constructions and written docu¬mentation, with the element of model construction providing a common denominator given the availability of tools and material. Another similarity between the practices is that the children are given opportunities to work at problem solving in cases where there are no given solutions. However, they enter problems due to their own embodiment in a pedagogy of transmission, which results in the fact that the shaping of technology becomes difficult to organize. Strict borders between subjects, the fragmented timetable of the school, and the organization of the classroom space and scarce equipment and materials all influence the possibilities of teaching in technology.
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| 4. |
- Halvars-Franzén, Bodil, 1959-
(författare)
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Barn och etik : möten och möjlighetsvillkor i två förskoleklassers vardag
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim is to examine how children create and embody ethics by analyzing their encounters and how possibilities are conditioned by the framework surrounding them. The focus has been on the following problem areas: Conditions that enable children’s ethical encounters with regard to frameworks, rules and order Conditions that enable children’s ethical encounters related to the teachers’ approach Children’s encounters in play from an ethical perspective Children’s encounters with nature from an ethical perspective The theoretical standpoint is ”the ethics of an encounter” from Emmanuel Levinas’ idea of ethics of alterity. In ethics which precedes being itself, the ethical becoming and its relational aspects appear in the encounter with the Other. The tools of analysis are mainly drawn from previous pedagogical/didactical research in ethics which highlights the ethical conditions, such as listening, encounters with diversity and differences, and preschool/school as an ethical space. The study is based on one year of ethnographical field studies relying on participant observations, video observations, focus groups, stimulated recalls and guided tours. The empirical findings show that rules and frameworks which regulate the everyday life of the preschool classes are repeatedly negotiated. The negotiations about “what’s what?”, where both the children and the teachers are involved, take place on a verbal and a bodily level. In the pedagogues’ approach, the listening is a central and complex condition for the ethical space in the preschool classes. In the children’s encounters in play and in their encounters with nature the relational aspect becomes clear. The ethical boundaries and the fixing of those boundaries are discussed in connection with the idea of the ethics of an encounter and the vision of preschool/school as a potential ethical space.
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| 5. |
- Håkanson, Christer, 1944-
(författare)
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Lärares yrkeslandskap : ett institutionellt perspektiv
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- School education takes place in an institution, which means certain restrictions on how teaching can be arranged and what learning processes can be established. The purpose of the present study is to examine the possible consequences of the institutional conditions characterising a school for teachers’ work. The object of analyses is teachers’ work as part of and a response to the institutional conditions and the more specific question is about the consequences of those conditions seen in relation to the task of preparing pupils to become active citizens. The analyses is directed towards a critical interpretation of the institutional conditions, based on a view that social processes are contradictory and characterised by power relations and that an awareness of restrictions will make it easier to overcome or change them. Insight into what forces make up a situation will facilitate social action. An institutional analysis presupposes institutionally related concepts, why some concepts which are not too frequently used in educational contexts have been introduced. These institutionally oriented conceptual tools aim at clarifying what implications for actions are built into different situations. They indicate current restrictions, but still leave room for alternative actions. The main focus of the study is on the classroom as a room for communication and learning seen in relation to processes of reflection, dialogue and experience which have been defined as necessary parts of a citizen education project. The conclusion is that teachers’ working conditions are contradictory from different points of view. There is a lack of coherence between programmatic goals and conditions offered to fulfil them, but there are also contradictions built into current teaching practices. Institutionalisation implies a limitation of the social space for action and a tendency to overlook the complexity of social processes. This does not mean that reflection, dialogue and experience do not occur in a classroom, but it means that this is rather an exception than a rule, and to accomplish a change presupposes changed institutional conditions.
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| 6. |
- Nordin-Hultman, Elisabeth, 1941-
(författare)
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Pedagogiska miljöer och barns subjektskapande
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main purpose of the study is to provide perspectives and contribute to the discussion about how children´s identities and subjectivity are made in pre-schools and schools; both how children look upon and understand themselves in the educational context and how they are perceived and described by others. The intentions have been to open possibilities to regard the educational environment as an important condition for children´s behaviour and doings and thus as conditions for their level of performance and for the identity that is ascribed to each child.The study is framed within a postmodern, or constructionistic, perspective. Through what is called the postmodern “linguistic turn” the dominant psychological focus on children´s characteristics, “inner” world and earlier experiencies could move towards a focus on concepts, theories and pedagogical practices as decisive of how children are seen and described.The first part of the study focuses on the organization of time, space and materials in preschools and classrooms. The analyses indicate that the materials for children´s activities and learning are relatively sparse and limited, with small variations and little materials that can be seen as easy to concentrate on and that catch and keep children´s attention. The regulations of time and space can be seen as surprisingly strong. Rooms and materials are strongly classified and framed. This indicates a small space in terms of children´s influence and demands a great deal of adaptation of each child. Historically this way of organizing pedagogical environments seems dominant in the Swedish tradition during the 2000th century.The second part focuses on different theoretical understandings of child – environment relations. The purpose is firstly to understand the strong tendency to individualize children´s behaviour and what happens in pre-schools and classrooms – despite the dominant theories of interactionism. This is accomplished by investigating the central theoretical concepts “individual”, “identity” and “development” as constituted within the Western modernistic tradition and as carrying meanings that individualize the relation between child and environment. Secondly the purpose is to create a theoretical space tounderstand children´s behaviour, performances and identities as changing and as inseparable of actual environments and situations. This is accomplished by using poststructural theories of subjectivity and the individual´s relation to the environment.The uniform and homogenous environment restricts children´s different ways to create meaningfulness and to relate positively to affordances and educational tasks. This increases the risks of exclusion and that more children are perceived as failing and deviating. A prerequisite for children´s diversities and variations to be acknowledged and accepted is that also pre-schools and classrooms are characterized by diversity and variation.
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| 7. |
- Lind, Ulla, 1951-
(författare)
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Blickens ordning : Bildspråk och estetiska lärprocesser som kulturform och kunskapsform
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main aim of this thesis is to research and discuss the conditions for visual and aesthetic learning processes as forms of culture and knowledge. Poststructural theories are used and the empirical findings are analyzed in relation to visual cultural studies as well as in relation to dominant orders of seeing and regimes of observation in visual pedagogies. The study employs two different research methods for investigating the conditions for children practicing visual languages as communicative and aesthetic learning processes. In the first study, visual and verbal documentation of aesthetic learning processes in four different preschool settings are followed and conducted. In the second study, school children were invited to visually represent their answers to the following question: “Tell in pictures about how it is to be a school child/pupil?” This research contributes to an increased understanding of visual languages, visual culture and aesthetic and creative learning processes contextualized through historical and contemporary meanings of preschools and schools.
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| 8. |
- Unga, Johanna, 1973-
(författare)
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Det är en spricka i allt, det är så ljuset kommer in… : Matematik och förskolebarns experimenterande och potentialitet
- 2013
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In preschools it is common that mathematics mainly focuses on how children learn mathematics through everyday activities, or on children´s understanding of mathematical concepts. However, views on mathematics-learning are today deepened and extended, and embrace children’s own mathematical signs, visual representations and bodily experiences. The overall aim of this thesis is to experiment with how this extended view in which children´s engagement and creativity is affirmed, simultaneously as they are developing knowledge about the world of mathematics with its procedures and rules. With inspiration from the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze´s and Félix Guattari´s immanent ontology and transcendental empiricism, and from the pedagogical philosophy of the preschools in Reggio Emilia, I have experimented both with mathematics, and with toddlers’ explorations and potentiality. The research-material primarily consists of video observations and documentations, and it is taken from a project with a mathematical topic through a cooperative work by me, preschool teachers and children aged 1–3 years. Methodologically the work is based on one example from the project where some children explores and experiment on geometric objects. In relation to the example some concepts from Reggio Emilia’s pedagogical thinking and Deleuze´s and Guattari´s immanent ontology are put to work, by focusing on the connections that emerge. The study make visible that children explore and experiment with mathematics in what in the study has called “a relational field of potentiality”. In relation to preschool didactics the study stresses the importance of teachers paying attention to and “listening” to children’s experimentations and sign-making, in order not to interrupt what is emerging/becoming. This requires an environment that embraces “the hundred languages” and enables collective experimentation for thoughts and ideas to be shared in “togetherness”.
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