Early Childhood Educators’ Perspectives of the Swedish National Curriculum for Preschool and Quality Work

Abstract

There is today an increasing global interest in early childhood education, especially with regard to curriculum and quality work. The aim of this article is to study preschool teachers’ and child care workers’ views on the revised national curriculum for preschool in Sweden (Lpfo 98, rev. 2010), and if the educators perceive that they can conduct quality work based on the curriculum. This article is based on a web-based questionnaire distributed to all municipal preschool teachers and child care workers (in this study called educators) employed in a small municipality (n = 111). The questionnaire consisted of eight questions with 54 sub-items with five reply alternatives, including ‘don’t know’. The reply frequency was 58.6 % (n = 65). Data were compiled and processed in a computer based program. The results showed that the preschool educators were positive to the curriculum and regarded it as a tool for improving the quality in preschool. The most important factors for increasing the quality were, according to the results, the educators’ attitudes, the number of children in the group and the teacher-to-child ratio.