Democracy in research circles to enable new perspectives on early childhood education and didactics

• The aim of this article is to examine aspects of democracy derived from partici-pation in so-called research circles, and to discuss participatory and democratic ideas arising in those circles as they relate to perspectives on early childhood education. This paper draws its argument mainly from material recorded from two research circles — one on Gender and the other on New subject didactic challenges in preschool. The analysis was based on the separate data from the two research circles and on a comparison between them. It is a theoretically governed approach based on Klafki’s critical constructive didactics and Biesta’s critical discussion on education and democracy in relation to the rise of neolib-eralism. Larsson’s three aspects of democracy in relation to study circles have been used: equal participation, horizontal relations and knowledge that inform standpoints. The diversity between the circles resulted in variations concerning form and content that could be discussed as related to democracy aspects.

Nyckelord

critical didactics

democracy

early childhood education

preschool

research circle

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)