Valuable everyday encounters in early childhood education : narratives from professionals

• This article presents professionals’ narratives about valuableencounters with young children in early childhood education(ECE) settings. The study aims to provide an in-depth perspectiveon how professionals talk about ethics in practice, and the valuesaddressed in the narratives. Initially, professionals in Swedish ECEsettings defined their understanding of a valuable encounter witha child and then used a digital app to self-register 10 such encountersduring one day. After the self-registration, we interviewed theprofessionals and they told us about the encounters they hadexperienced. We identified three themes concerning who was thefocus of the encounters: the professional, the child, or both reciprocally.By using a narrative approach and Nussbaum’s ethicaltheoretical perspective, we show how different rationales wereinterwoven in the stories and that situated emotions were enactedand reflected. Finally, we noticed that many valuable encounterstook place in ‘in-between spaces’. They were not planned for ororganised, but occurred spontaneously through professionals’ sensitiveemployment of an ethics in practice.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogiskt arbete (hsv//swe)

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

Nyckelord

pedagogiskt arbete

educational work

Valuable encounters; preschool; leisure-time centres; profession

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)