Learning writing Teacher’s perspective on how to promote and lay the foundations for children’s writing development

• The primary focus of this presentation is to gain a deeper understanding of teachers’ perspectives on how to promote children’s writing development in the Swedish preschool class. The research questions are: According to teachers, in which contexts during day-to-day teaching activities are children stimulated and challenged to write? How do teachers describe their support of children’s writing development?Since the introduction in 1998 of the preschool class, its lack of equivalence in teaching, its lack of clear guidelines on the teaching purpose, its content and its status as a voluntary school form has been discussed and criticized both in research and in politics (Sandberg, 2012). I July 2016 new sections were introduced in the curriculum for preschool class and from July, 1st 2018 it is mandatory for all six-year-olds to attend preschool class.The theoretical approach is based on Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural perspective about learning and development. Centrally within the sociocultural perspective is that human beings acquire knowledge by participating in various activities in interaction with others. Together with a more competent person the child can solve a task and complete a skill that it is not yet capable of its own. According to Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976), scaffolding can be described as a temporary support structure for a child’s learning process that with time becomes unnecessary.The study is based on a qualitative approach through interviews with twelve teachers working in preschool class in seven different municipalities in Sweden. These semi-structured interviews were characterised by being based on a number of predetermined themes: background questions, writing activities during the week, artefacts in the learning environment, documented in an interview guide. The transcribed interviews were thematically analysed (Braun & Clark, 2006). The data were organised into two themes; Writing and Support. The result shows mainly two different views of how to develop children´s writing. One approach places great weight on working to develop creative and functional writing. The other approach is primarily characterised by working on technical skills and developing the child’s phonological awareness. Teachers utilise various support strategies to develop children’s writing skills which can be divided into high-level and low-level skills (Bingham, Quinn and Gerde, 2017). But there are teachers that do not have awareness of how to support children and how to develop their writing through different writing activities; this can be explained by a lack of knowledge regarding how literacy develops.The results of this study contributes to reflection and discussion regarding approaches and didactic strategies that need to be developed in preschool class to support children’s early writing. Bingham, G. E., Quinn, M. F., & Gerde, H. K. (2017). Examining early childhood teacher’s writing practices: Associations between pedagogical supports and children´s writing skills. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 39, 35-46.Braun, V., & Clark, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101.Sandberg, G. (2012). På väg in i skolan om villkor för olika barns delaktighet och skriftspråkslärande. Diss Uppsala: Uppsala University.Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. The development of higher psychological processes. London: Harvard University Press.   

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Preschool class

scaffolding

teaching writing

teacher’s perspective

Didactics

didaktik

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)