The research presented in this paper explores how preschool teachers in Sweden negotiate tensions stemming from perceived cultural dilemmas among themselves, the children they work with, and the children´s parents or guardians. The aim in characterising this process of negotiation is to expand knowledge about how to adapt pedagogically to the increasing diversity of the preschool sector in Sweden. The study is based on focus group interviews with preschool teachers who work in schools where nearly 70% of the children are newly arrived immigrants or have parents or guardians who were born in a country other than Sweden. The interview data were subjected to a thematic analysis. Three themes emerged: Circumventing conflicts by keeping preschool peaceful; Culture as a barrier and opportunity for dealing with dilemmas; and engaging with conflicts as a means of developing the preschool profession. The themes are discussed in relation to Gert Biesta’s concepts of the rational community and the community of those who have nothing in common.

Swedish preschool pedagogues have recently been coping with increased expectations to engage in “adult-led, goal oriented” teaching, and work with sustainability-related issues. In Swedish preschool provision, teaching and sustainability are contested concepts that embody pedagogical tensions (e.g. teaching as a school-like vs. a holistic activity; sustainability as an environmental and/or social concern). Some pedagogues have thus responded with ambivalence to this teaching/sustainability assignment. The present study explores how Swedish preschool pedagogues, experienced in Early Childhood Education and Care for Sustainability (ECECfS) research and practice, engage in teaching. Qualitative case studies were conducted of teacher teams from three preschools. The teams participated in a series of government-sponsored workshops for designing outdoor spaces in preschools as sustainable, multifunctional environments. Case studies were based on group interviews, surveys, and field observations. Drawing on concepts from cultural-historical activity theory, thematic analyses were conducted to characterize practitioner conceptions and practices of ECECfS and teaching in preschool. The study met all criteria for ethical conduct. Teachers described ECECfS in terms of what is learned and how. What: environmental knowledge; attitudes, feelings toward the environment, and toward others; self-confidence. How: arrangements for time “in nature”; systematic observation; pretend play; themed project work. Pedagogical tensions were identified which linked these descriptions thematically: ECECfS as teaching content vs. “teaching” values; approach vs. sensitivity to the environment; ECECfS as environmentally vs. socially focused. Implications are discussed for developing pedagogies that advance the ECECfS ethos of adult-child coparticipation in and co-determination of preschool activities. 

One of the productive challenges of working in early childhood education and care is combining researchers’ and teachers’ knowledge and ways of knowing. This chapter presents findings from studies that combine researchers’ perspectives and teacher’s insights. We suggest that a certain type of adult–child joint play, called playworld, (Lindqvist, 1995), can be a means for preschool teachers to bring their personal selves, not just their professional, teacher selves, into their work with young children (Ferholt & Schuck, forthcoming; Nilsson et al., 2018). We begin from a relational pedagogical perspective (Aspelin & Persson, 2011) where concepts of co-existence and co-operation are central. This conceptual framework is applied in a case study using observations from a two-year ethnographic investigation of three Swedish preschool teachers implementing playworld pedagogy for the first time. Their work was influenced by a pedagogy of listening and exploratory learning, originating from the municipal preschools of Reggio Emilia.

Syftet med artikeln är att bidra till kunskapandet om pedagogisk dokumentation med specifikt fokus på dokumentationens betydelse ur ett demokratiperspektiv. Trots många studier kring pedagogisk dokumentation finns det få studier som explicit utgår ifrån barn och vårdnadshavares perspektiv. I artikeln analyseras barns och vårdnadshavares samtal utifrån minnesbilder, vilka framträder i fokusgruppssamtal, från förskoletiden i relation till pedagogiskt dokumentationsarbete. Resultatet visar att den pedagogiska dokumentationspraktiken bidrog till skapandet av en praktikgemenskap på förskolan vilket i sin tur möjliggjorde en demokratisk undervisning.

The purpose of the article is to contribute with knowledge of pedagogical documentation with a particular focus on the importance of documentation from a democracy perspective. While there are many studies of pedagogical documentation, few studies explicit examine this practice from the perspective of children and guardians. Analyses, based on focus group data of children ́s and guardian ́s conversations from memories of the children ́s time spent in preschool in relation to educational documentation work, are presented. Pedagogical documentation practice is shown to contribute to the creation of a community of practice at the preschool, which in turn enabled democratic education.

Förskolan i Sverige har blivit en del av skolväsendet och begrepp från skolans värld överförs till och ska gälla även för förskolan, däribland undervisning och utbildning. Undervisning definieras i skollagen som målstyrda och lärarledda processer. Vi vill med artikeln bidra till kunskapandet om hur undervisning i förskolan kan förstås. Med begreppen iscensättning och målrelationella- kontra målrationella lärandeprocesser analyserar vi delar av ett årslångt utforskande- och lekprojekt i en förskola. Baserat på analysen argumenterar vi för en målrelationell ansats för att tänka kring och arrangera för målstyrda processer i förskolan.

Since 1998, preschool provision in Sweden has been supervised through the Ministry of Edu-cation. Since then, concepts from compulsory schooling have been formally incorporated in this provision. Teaching, is a particularly striking example, as it is currently applied to pre-school based on the definition in the Swedish school law: “teacher-led, goal-oriented pro-cesses.” This paper contributes knowledge concerning how teaching in preschool can be un-derstood. Drawing on the concepts of staging, and goal-relational versus goal-rational pro-cesses, we present analyses of preschool activities documented as part of a year-long project focused on children’s socio-dramatic play and exploration. We argue for a goal-relational ap-proach to thinking about and arranging for goal-directed processes in preschool.

In this paper we problematize the dichotomization of play and learning that often shapes the agenda of early childhood education research and practice. This dichotomization is driven in part by the tendency to define lerning in terms of formal learning (i.e. learning as an outcome of direct instruction; and of school-based approaches that focus on teacher-led, goal directed activities and declarative knowledge; and learning in the content areas, such as math and literacy). We argue for a re-conceptualization of early childhood education that understands learning and development not as an outcome, primarily, of instruction and teaching, but as an outcome of play and exploration. We develop this argument by drawing on Vygotsky’s theories of play, imagination, realistic thinking and creativity. These theories challenge another dichotomy -  that between imagination and reality -  by arguing that imagination is implicated in the meaning making of both play and exploration. Instead of relating play to learning where play is characterized by imagination and learning by reality, our re-conceptualization relates play to exploration and proposes that learning, defined as leading to human development, is an outcome of both of these two activities. We further develop our argument by presenting ethnographic material from a qualitative research project implemented in three Swedish preschools, whose practices are influenced by the Reggio Emilia pedagogical approach. The research conducted in this study contributes to new perspectives on the relationship between play and learning by introducing exploration as a counterpart to play, and this new perspective has implications for the design and practice of early childhood education, as well as for early childhood education research.

In this article we critically examine and problematizethe concept of teaching in contemporary Swedish preschoolprovision, and sketch a holistic preschool didactics aimed at addressingkey problems that emerge from the implementation of the concept ofteaching in preschool. We briefly survey how teaching is conceptualizedand managed from different theoretical perspectives and institutionaldiscourses. Drawing on cultural historical activity theory and situatedlearning approaches, we argue for the formation of a preschool didacticsbased on a socio-cultural understanding of play in combination with aReggio Emilia-inspired understanding of exploratory and project-basedwork methods.