’Same, same but different’ – leading quality work in preschools

• The purpose with this article is to understand how educational action research is carried out due to social-political, material-economic and cultural-discursive arrangements and how a) these practice architectures (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008) enables and constraints the development on different leading practices in a local site and b) how these leading practices hang together in the project of quality program in preschools in a municipality. Two local sites were chosen in which early childhood teachers were enrolled in a yearlong program of action research. To get hold of different leading practices in a local authority teacher teams, the principal and the director were interviewed in each authority. They represent three practices (and different levels in the organization), which are supposed to have an impact on one another. The Nordic theory of a ´free-room´(Berg, 2003) in combination with the practice architecture theory is used to analyse data. According to the free room theory the outer boundaries of the schools as an institution is composed by rules-, results-, frames- and goal-steering and within those boundaries there is a scope for action at the school organization level. Through the lens of practice architecture ‘sayings’, ‘doings’ and ‘relatings’ as different dimensions in practice are analysed. Impact from one practice on another is clearly shown in how the directors in both local authorities talk (‘sayings’) about action research as not only a project limited to time and economy (goal-steering). All teachers should be involved and different steps have been taken (‘doings’) to manifest this involvement (e.g. the first early childhood teachers who were enrolled in the program have been engaged as facilitators for other teachers (frame-steering). This shapes new relations between facilitators, principals and director (‘relatings’) who collaborate (operations) around the development of educational action research. The comparisons between the two local sites show similarities but also differences in the light of practice architecture and how the free-room is used at the educational site. It is important that the steering has a counterpart of operations to enable on-going educational development. If steering and operations are not aligned with each other there is a risk to build in constraints instead. We argue that it is important for a local authority to take into account how the practice architecture can enable further development.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

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

Nyckelord

preschool

action research

leading practices

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)