Student teachers' and preschool children's questions about life — A phenomenographic approach to learning

Abstract

SUMMARY The Swedish Higher Education Ordinance (Högskoleförordning, 1993) outlines a set of goals for the education of preschool teachers. These goals state that education should help student teachers1 to develop a capacity for identifying and working with issues of an existential, ethical, ecological, international and cultural character in preschool. Previous research (Hartman, 1986; Johansson, 1992; Pramling & Johansson, 1995) indicates that preschool teachers find children's questions about life complicated to handle. The purpose of the present study was threefold. Firstly, an empirical study aimed to find out and describe students' perspectives of children's questions about life, that is, children's search for meaning in their experience of living. Secondly, an intervention study aimed to develop students' competence in working with preschool children's questions about life and to offer students a phenomenographical oriented pedagogy to use in their future work. Finally, we wanted to compare these students' ways of experiencing with those of the students' involved in a traditional oriented pedagogy at another university. The results show a significant change in the preschool teacher trainees' experiences of how they considered children's questions about life and the strategies for working with these questions in preschool. After the intervention study was completed, the students emphasised the importance of finding the child's point of view and of tackling the child's questions together. The students found that their roles and the questions were a tool for helping children develop their thinking and understand the world around them.