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- Asplund Carlsson, Maj, 1948, et al.
(författare)
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Från görande till lärande och förståelse. En studie av lärares lärande inom estetik
- 2008
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Ingår i: Nordisk Barnehageforskning. - 1890-9167. ; 1:1, s. 41-51
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this article is to analyze teachers’ changing ways of talking about children’s aesthetic learning in the early years as a result of a research and development project. With a point of departure in developmental and variation theory, a praxis oriented project was designed with the aim of finding out whether collaborative talk and meta-cognitive dialogues could contribute to children’s learning of music, dance and poetry. The participating teachers were offered in-service training in order to develop a new way of teaching and new ways of thinking about the curriculum and children’s learning. Interviews with the teachers were carried out at the beginning and the end of the project. The teachers’ learning was expressed in changed ways of talking about aesthetics and learning. From an emphasis on personality development and the teacher’s lack of expertise with the aesthetic subjects as an obstacle, the teachers expressed a view of having become more aware of the concept of learning objects in the aesthetics, of their own role as teachers in directing children’s attention and to listen to children. The teachers thus gained a new way of talking about themselves as teachers and about children’s learning within music, dance and poetry.
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| 3. |
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Barns tidiga lärande : en tvärsnittsstudie om förskolan som miljö för barns lärande
- 2009
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Samlingsverk (redaktörskap) (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main aim of preschool is to promote children’s learning, implying that its quality is an important aspect to study. However, despite a long preschool tradition and a preschool system that is nearing completion, we have limited knowledge of the effect of preschool on children’s learning and knowledge formation. The overall aim of the study, Children’s early learning, is to gain knowledge of the characteristics of preschool as a learning environment by studying various preschool environments and the impact they have on children’s knowledge formation/experiences of different aspects of communication, mathematics and interplay. Questions at issue are: How does children’s knowledge formation emerge in relation to specific content areas in different preschool contexts? What quality aspects emerge as important for children’s learning in different preschool contexts according to the teachers and parents? How are these different quality aspects constituted and related to one another? A case study of bilingual children has also been conducted within the project. It is based on the question: What communicative patterns emerge in interplay among young children who have Swedish as their second language? The complexity of preschool, as a learning context, can only be grasped by adopting several research approaches, and examining it from diverse perspectives and dimensions. Therefore, the study is based on two theoretical perspectives: interactionistic theory (Ball, 2006; Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1986; Bruner, 1996) and variation theory (Marton & Booth, 2000). The study is also based on a pedagogical perspective of quality (Sheridan, 2001, 2009). The study was conducted in Gothenburg. A stratified sample of eight districts was chosen in order to represent diverse geographical areas and living conditions as well as ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Within these districts a random sample of 38 preschools was selected. All the children aged 1 and 2 years (230) in these preschools, plus their parents and teachers (120) participated. The study has a cross-sectional design and is divided into eight different parts and content areas. The data production is both quantitative and qualitative. Given the theoretical framework of the study, there are few methods available to observe young children’s learning and development. Therefore, the development of methods to observe children’s knowledge related to mathematics, communication and interplay may be seen as important results of this study. The results highlight a variation in preschool quality and in the ways the teachers communicate with and approach the children. Three different learning environments of low, good and high quality emerged, showing that children do not have equal opportunities for learning in preschool. The learning environments are: Separating and limiting environments, Child-centred negotiating environments and Challenging learning environments. Teachers and parents see preschool mainly as a democratic and social arena, even though learning of mathematics and literacy are becoming important contents in preschool education. The individual child’s learning and development are primary concerns. Play is emphasised and learning is accepted as long as it is based on the initiative of the child and/or is a by-product of play. According to the teacher’s observations, the children seem to be involved in creative and reciprocal interactions, characterised by joy and interest. The preschool context seems to offer children various positions, which may be described as interactive observational, adaptive and driving. The results indicate that a significant change in knowing/learning occurs between the age of 1 and 3 years with regard to children’s ability to approach and handle different tasks related to mathematics and communication. The results show that this is an important time in children’s learning, and that much depends on the quality of the preschool. These findings should benefit research on early childhood education on both a national and international level.
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| 4. |
- Björklund, Elisabeth, 1945-
(författare)
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Att erövra litteracitet : Små barns kommunikativa möten med berättande, bilder, text och tecken i förskolan
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is based on an ethnographic field study among a group of monolingual children from one and a half to three years old at a pre-school in a Swedish village. The primary aim of the study has been to gain knowledge about how young children conquer and express literacy in their everyday lives. One assumption was that children are active and competent in their search for meaning when dealing with texts, signs and images. A second aim has been to investigate whether children’s literacy could have an impact on the social and cultural context of pre-school.Research questions addressed in the study focus on children’s participation in literacy events and their actions in literacy practice. An additional question was whether children were contributing to literacy practice when interacting with other children in the group.The theoretical framework draws upon socio-cultural theory. The empirical material consists of video recordings and the focus of observation has been on children’s actions related to literacy, expressed as early literacy, including reading and writing as well as telling and retelling narratives, singing and other verbal and non verbal communication. In children’s literacy events and literacy practice the specific context was of central interest. All the material collected has been transcribed and transferred into text and constitutes the basis for analyzing what children are performing in actual events and practices. The guiding principle for description was at first to give a close reproduction of children’s verbal utterances and their acting linked to the concept of early literacy. Secondly, the aim was to describe and analyze whether the utterances and actions could be linked to the specific social and cultural context.The analysed material demonstrates how children participate and interact with each other while engaged in literacy and the material also displays the content of their communication. Two different kinds of literacy appear: one is narrative tellings and the other is reading and drawing/writing. A deeper analysis shows that children are building knowledge of telling and also creating a specific manifesto of literacy. The children also underline what they are doing through verbal expressions where they defined themselves as both readers and writers.The result gives a contribution to new knowledge and an understanding of early literacy among very young children as something they have created in pre-school as a social and cultural environment. Literacy in the studied group of children uncovers many more expressions, including several actions with regard to written material, than we usally relate to the youngest children in pre-school.
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| 5. |
- Carioca, V., et al.
(författare)
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ICT in the Early Years: Handbook for Trainers.
- 2005
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The research carried out over the last years, in the areas of different kinds of technology, has shown that they modify and influence the ways we thing, work and, inevitably, the way we learn. The acquisition of a knowledge, skill and understanding of technology is one of the most important aspects of children’s education, since they are getting ready to live in an age of information and multimedia. It this knowledge, skill and understanding is to be successfully acquired in the pre-school this will at first depend on the successful preparation of their pre-school teachers.
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| 6. |
- Davis, J, et al.
(författare)
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Specific recommendations for Early Childhood Education
- 2008
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Ingår i: The Gothenburg Recommendations on Education for Sustainable Development, Adopted November 12. - Göteborg : Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg.
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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Didaktiska studier från förskola och skola
- 2008
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Samlingsverk (redaktörskap) (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Idag ökar kraven på att förskolan ska vara en pedagogisk verksamhet. Förskollärare förväntas arbeta med att utveckla olika sorters förmågor och kunskaper hos små barn. Förskolan har också en läroplan med strävansmål som ska vägleda verksamheten. Hur kan lärare i förskolan, förskoleklassen och skolans först år arbeta målmedvetet pedagogiskt för att utveckla barns förståelse för olika aspekter av omvärlden? Hur utmanar och hjälper lärare barn att lära och hur svarar barnen på dessa utmaningar? I den här boken beskrivs en teori (variationsteori) om barns lärande, och en modell för hur man kan arbeta med att utveckla barns olika förmågor. Ett antal fallstudier beskriver hur lärare försöker utveckla barns kunnande inom en rad olika områden eller ”kunskapsämnen”: matematik, skrift, musik, fonetik, naturvetenskap och sociala förmågor. De möjligheter och svårigheter som lärare stöter på då de försöker arbeta systematisk och målinriktat med att utveckla små barns kunnande diskuteras.
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| 8. |
- Doverborg, Elisabet, 1947, et al.
(författare)
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Den synliga didaktiken
- 2009
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Ingår i: Förskoletidningen. ; 34:6, s. 12-17
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 10. |
- Emilson, Anette, 1964-
(författare)
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Det önskvärda barnet : Fostran uttryckt i vardagliga kommunikationshandlingar mellan lärare och barn i förskolan
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this research is to acquire knowledge about fostering young children, as expressed in everyday interactions between teachers and children in Swedish preschools. The three empirical studies in this doctoral thesis investigated partly specific democratic values such as participation and influence and partly the values that teachers explicitly or implicitly encourage and how these values are communicated to children. The thesis takes a critical approach in order to also acquire knowledge about important fostering aspects that can move hierarchal power structures towards a fostering of values characterized by intersubjectivity. In order to understand the interactions, the concepts of communicative and strategic action (Habermas, 1984) are used, as well as strong and weak classification and framing (Bernstein, 2000). Preschool fostering is also analyzed from a double perspective, with a starting-point in Habermas’ (1984, 1995a) concepts of the system and the life-world. The fieldwork took place with three different groups of toddlers in Swedish preschools. Forty-six children (aged 1 to 3 years) participated, as well as their ten teachers. The data consisted of videotaped observations of teacher and child interactions. The first study investigated how a toddler’s participation can be understood in two kinds of educational activities where the degree of teacher control differs. The results showed how strong classification and framing risk restricting children’s participation and how a weak classification and framing can promote children’s opportunities to participate on their own terms. Important issues for children’s participation were found to be a participant teacher who creates meaningful contexts, where teacher control is about being emotionally present, supportive and responsive. The purpose of the second study was to investigate how very young children can exert an influence in circle-time situations in relation to teacher control. The results showed that the children do, in fact, make choices, mostly based on several fixed alternatives, and that they do take the initiative, sometimes to express an opinion or a right, sometimes to express what they want to do in circle time. It was also found that the influence young children are able to exert varies with the control the teacher exercises. It is evident that strong teacher control is maintained in different ways and that strong control does not necessarily limit children’s influence; it depends on the nature of the control. Children’s influence increases when the teacher’s control over the what and how aspects of communications is weak, and is characterized by closeness to the child’s life-world and a communicative approach. The third study examined the values that teachers explicitly or implicitly encourage and how these values are communicated to children. The analyses resulted in ten specific values embedded in value dimensions of discipline, caring and democracy. These, in turn, can be divided into different social orientations – both collective and individualistic. The values are communicated differently and the what aspect of the communication (the value) is interrelated with the how aspect of the communication; how teachers communicate influences and sometimes changes the communicated value. In order to change power structures in teacher and child interactions, three aspects of importance have been identified: teachers’ closeness to the child’s perspective, their emotional presence and playfulness. Theoretically, the aspects are within the framework of communicative action and contribute to the understanding of what the theory might mean in communication with the youngest children in the educational system.
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