«Det er jo lek og læring, sant?»: Konstruksjon av profesjonelle identiteter og kritiske standpunkt

Abstract

Samtidig som presset har okt pa barnehageinstitusjonen om a innfore tidlig innsats-strategier det siste tiaret, har et stadig storre antall Norske barnehageforskere funnet det nodvendig a forsvare barns rett til a leke. Mange er kritiske til at malrettet undervisning gar pa bekostning av tiden barna far til a leke. Jeg vil vise hvordan norske barnehagelaererstudenter som tok et studiesemester i Nicaragua konstruerte profesjonelle identiteter ved a markere standpunkt i henhold til lek og undervisning. Studiet inkluderte en tre ukers praksis i lokale barnehager, og artikkelen tar utgangspunkt i intervjuer i forbindelse med informantenes praksiserfaringer. ABSTRACT English title: It's Just Play-Based Learning, You Know?: The Construction of Professional Identitites and Critical Standpoints While the pressure on day care institutions to implement early intervention strategies has been immense during the last decade, an increased number of Norwegian kindergarten researchers find it necessary to defend children’s right to play. One of the strongest objections is that formal learning methods absorbs time that could have been utilized for playing activities. In this article I analyse interviews with Norwegian kindergarten teacher students who did a one term course in Nicaragua. I will show how the informants constructed professional identities by dichotomising play and teaching. The studies included three weeks of teacher training practice in local kindergartens. I interpret the interviews through Dorothy Smith’s (1978, 2005) sociological theories on language construction. The informants distanced themselves from teaching activities they observed in Nicaraguan kindergartens. Simultaneously, they strongly identified with traditional Nordic pedagogics, in particular children’s play as a method of learning. That this happened is not necessarily surprising. An interesting feature of the interviews is that informants excluded discourses on increased learning pressure in their descriptions of Norwegian kindergartens. An important aspect of the article is the way it shows how identification is being done, and how professional discourses are applied.