Working with gender pedagogics at 14 Swedish preschools

Abstract

In Sweden, gender pedagogics has been on the political agenda the last decade. Consequently, gender matters have been given much attention in Swedish preschools, and specialized pedagogues have also been trained to counteract socially constructed gender distinctions. Therefore, we have explored the enactment of gender pedagogics. We asked 17 preschool teachers to describe the situations revolving around gender issues that they have experienced, using the critical incident method. In all, 34 critical incidents were described and subsequently discussed in groups of 6–10 individuals. Afterward, the data were analyzed qualitatively, with the objective to explore the preschool teachers’ understanding of gender approaches. The analysis led us to single out four “ideal type approaches,” that is, “instrumental,” “co-productive,” “facilitative,” “proactive,” and “agitative” gender approach. The gender approaches were made up by the different ways of interacting with the children as regards gender described by the preschool teachers and by the different ways of reflecting over the described situations. We argue that the four different types of gender interaction emanate from corresponding underlying conceptions of gender, and that they may exercise influence on the children’s identity process.