Danish Kindergartens Research Articles

Suspect and non-target screening of semi-volatile emerging contaminants in indoor dust from Danish kindergartens

Indoor dust is a sink of hundreds of organic chemicals, and humans may potentially be exposed to these via indoor activities. This study investigated potentially harmful semi-volatile organic contaminants in indoor dust from Danish kindergartens using suspect and non-target screening on gas chromatography (GC)-Orbitrap, supported by target analyses using GC-low resolution mass spectrometry (LRMS). A suspect list of 41 chemicals with one or more toxicological endpoints, i.e. endocrine disruption, carcinogenicity, neurotoxicity and allergenicity, known or suspected to be present in indoor dust, was established including phthalate and non-phthalate plasticizers, flame retardants, bisphenols, biocides, UV filters and other plastic additives. Of these, 29 contaminants were detected in the indoor dust samples, also including several compounds that had been banned or restricted for years. In addition, 22 chemicals were tentatively identified via non-target screening. Several chemicals have not previously been detected in Danish indoor dust. Most of the detected chemicals are known to be potentially harmful for human health while hazard assessment of the remaining compounds indicated limited risks to human. However, children were not specifically considered in this hazard assessment.

Who programs whom?—Computational empowerment through mastery and appropriation in young children’s computational thinking activities

This paper sheds light on 3–5-year-old children’s enactments of computational empowerment (CE) in activities with computational thinking (CT). CT is widely elaborated on as a universal problem-solving approach and a skill set necessary for thriving in today’s digitized societies. Scholars claim that CT for all should be ensured from an early age, and several studies develop and examine age-appropriate technological tools, as well as pedagogical approaches, for young children’s learning of CT. Based on 1.5 years of co-designing for children’s situated CT in two Danish kindergartens, the present study conducts a socioculturally informed analysis of video-observed interactions between children and educational robots. The findings display how children and robots engage in interactions that transcend children’s mastery of CT in any narrow sense. This is examined as situated enactments of CE; as children’s critical and informed decisions regarding the roles that technologies, in this case educational robots, can play in their institutionally situated social lives. The paper concludes that children’s various enactments of CE deserve scholarly and professional attention, both as an important prerequisite for, and as a necessary limitation to, the implementation of CT in kindergartens.

A window of change: how COVID-19 disrupted pedagogical approaches in Danish kindergartens

ABSTRACT COVID-19 disrupted almost all pedagogical activities in Danish kindergartens. Basic principles were challenged because of new demands for hygiene and social and physical distance. More activities were moved outdoors, group sizes were minimized, parents had to stay outside the grounds and kindergarten teachers had to deal with a lot of insecurity. However, after a challenging period, new potentials emerged, and new, promising pedagogical principles were identified. In this article, we present examples of COVID-19 disruption in Danish kindergartens with children aged 2-5, based on a mixed-methods study using survey data as background material for qualitative field observations and interviews. The research questions are: What characterizes the learning environments and pedagogical approaches in kindergartens, and how are they redefined over time in response to the two-phase disruption during COVID-19? The article provides four answers concerning: rethinking play activities; rethinking food and meals; rethinking handover and parent relations; and handling insecurity. In addition, two short sections deal with the consequences for management and the kindergarten teachers’ professional identity.

Aesthetically sensitive pathways to knowledge in and through action research in Danish kindergartens

ABSTRACT This article examines aesthetically sensitive pathways to knowledge in and through action research with artists and pedagogues in Danish kindergartens. The action research process took place from January 2016 through June 2017 and involved collaboration between artists and pedagogues (pædagoger in Danish). Artists and pedagogues facilitated aesthetic processes located in the kindergartens and became aware of how to support children’s participation in and possibilities for aesthetic experiences. The author understands action research as a messy and lived aesthetically sensitive inquiry, that synthesizes body and mind as one interwoven act and as especially connected to first- and second-person perspectives. Furthermore, this approach includes the researcher as a sensitive participant observer in both workshops with adults and in actions with adults and children. This article focuses attention on the aesthetically sensitive pathways to knowledge in workshops and collaborative analysis. The article contributes to aesthetics as a sensitive kind of knowledge in action research and in the pedagogue’s professional work. Drawing on philosophical aesthetics, the article highlights aesthetics as sensitive experience and cognition and relates it to intuitive and sensitive awareness and attunement and beautiful thinking (aesthetic reflection).

Beauty Bubbles, Subtle Meetings, and Frames for Play: Aesthetic Processes in Danish Kindergartens.

Beauty Bubbles, Subtle Meetings, and Frames for Play: Aesthetic Processes in Danish Kindergartens.

01. Does cultural capital matter in professional settings? Educational value profiles among the personnel in kindergartens

This article presents a study on plausible correlations between social background and educational values in a group of 700 employees in 80 Danish kindergartens. It investigates whether the pedagogical efforts of the staff are indebted to their living milieus of upbringing. The basic premises of research are developed along Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, outlined in the concept of “normative acts”, which also serves as a point of departure for the research design. Employing the multiple correspondence analyses in continuation of the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu, the first section of the questionnaire used gathers information on the respondents’ capital assets. In the second section, participants are asked a number of value questions based on the framework of Mary Douglas. Subsequently, I examine the structural interrelationship between the two sections. The research results show that the respondents typically share pedagogical values across social background, age, and position in the professional job hierarchy. However, it also shows that there are correlations between the possession of acquired capital and particular educational values.

Food for Kindergarten Children: Who cares? Relations between Food and Care in Everyday Kindergarten Mealtime

This paper discusses mealtime in Danish kindergartens as sites for contested understandings of food, bodies, and care, in an everyday life perspective. Two contesting perspectives on the daily meals are presented, one that highlights the bodily experience of eating, and one that emphasizes the relations between food and health. The coexistence of these perspectives causes tensions in the everyday meals, and in the relations between children and adults. It is argued that adults often downplay the meaning of children’s bodily experiences of eating on behalf of a more rational approach to eating that seeks to construct healthy bodies. The paper builds on empirical material produced in the period from early spring 2011 to winter 2013 as part of a doctoral research project. The production of empirical material took place in three Danish kindergartens through a combination of several qualitative methods, among others participant observation, interviews and creative activities with children.

Parental perception of lunch schemes in Danish kindergartens: A cross-sectional survey

ABSTRACTChildren’s daily consumption of food in childcare institutions has an impact on their public health nutritional status. The collaboration of parents and employees of kindergartens is important to ensure healthy eating habits among the next generation. Consequently, evaluations of lunch schemes are important to provide a good foundation for enhancing communication between home and institutional settings. The aim of this article is to assess parental satisfaction and identify themes related to parental perceptions of lunch schemes in Danish kindergartens. A survey was developed and distributed in four kindergartens with lunch schemes. A combination of closed and open questions were used to evaluate satisfaction and identify positive and negative aspects of the lunch schemes. Parents of 93 children participated in the study and the response rate was 55%. Eighty-nine percent expressed satisfaction with their children’s lunch scheme. According to parents, the most positive aspects were that lunch schemes serve a variety of food, their ability to prevent neophobia, that children learn that eating is a social occasion, and that the arrangements offer convenience to parents. The negative aspects identified were the lack of communication between the kindergarten childcare institutions and the parents regarding the food. Overall, parents are very satisfied with their children’s lunch schemes; however, the information between institutions and parents could be improved.

Kan du tage pigen op af kufferten? En analyse af sproglig evaluering i daginstitutioner

The article presents results from a study in language testing of children in two kindergartens in Copenhagen. Closely related to poor PISA-results in reading in the Danish schools language testing in Danish kindergartens have been vastly extended. This has caused an intense and heated debate among scholars, in which the extended language testing in Kindergartens are supported or opposed, based on either generalized perspectives on expected school progress or on generalized perspectives on the harm testing practices might do children in kindergartens. The study reported in this article goes beyond these generalized perspectives from “the outside”, and points to the necessity of an ethnographic-oriented “insideperspective” in which kindergartens language testing is researched empirically as a local and social practice. A theoretical framework for researching language testing as a social practice is developed and applied to ethnographic date from fieldwork in two kindergartens in Copenhagen. The study shows that the view of language and the view of measurement and knowledge embedded in the language test results in specific institutional practices in which the interaction between the child and the preschool-teacher focusses on children’s receptive knowledge of structural components of language. Furthermore the practices appear to be based on highly normative assumptions about children´s language development and everyday life. The analysis shows that the social practices around language testing are placing children in a position in which their potential as creative and productive producers of language in interaction is absent from the agenda. The implications of this for the ongoing development of kindergarten practices and for pre-school teachers are discussed.

Associations between pedagogues attitudes, praxis and policy in relation to physical activity of children in kindergarten – results from a cross sectional study of health behaviour amongst Danish pre-school children.

This paper reports on associations between physical activity, pedagogue's attitudes towards promoting physical activity and the physical activity policies (PAP) in kindergarten. The paper deals with data on physical activity of 3-6 year olds in kindergarten which originates from a cross-sectional study conducted in 2006 among all Danish kindergartens. A questionnaire of 48 questions based on pedagogues assessment regarding the health related polcies and praxis in kindergarten and the attitudes of pedagogues was mailed (n = 4200) to all institutions in the country. In total, 1149 kindergartens and 693 integrated institutions returned the survey. The results show a relation between pedagogue's attitudes towards promoting children's physical activity and the number of children having moderately intense physical activity for at least one hour a day. The study also shows a positive association between policies and pedagogue's attitudes towards promoting children's physical activity and the number of days that pedagogues initiated games that made the children physically active. The study suggests that the social and organizational environment in the kindergarten is an important determinant for the level of physical activity among children. This means that the individual norms and attitudes of pedagogues along with the collective intentions and values expressed in written and adopted organizational policies (a Physical Activity Policy--PAP) are important aspects to be worked upon if kindergarten should play an active role in the promotion of healthy lifestyle among kindergarten aged children. Strong municipal and institutional leadership as well as educational interventions in the curricula of pedagogues could be important ways to bring about such change.

Orden og arbejdsdelinger i daginstitutionen

Title: Keeping order: On the division of labour in kindergartens.Abstract: The article presents a research project that deals with aspects of division of labour among assistants and the professionalized group of social care workers in Danish kindergartens. Theories of P. Bourdieu, M. Douglas and E. Goffman have supported a main hypothesis questioning some possible division of labour and relations of domination in the interchange between the two staff member groups. The empirical part of the research work are primarily gathered around observational studies of four educational assistants in three day care centres situated in three different social locations. The conclusions point out, that the daily social exchanges do not exhibit any evident division of labour among the assistants and the professionalized group of social care workers. The assistant can’t on this basis be regarded as the social care workers’ assistant. On the contrary, two of the assistants are positioned in some central organising and managing positions within their specific unit.

Influential factors for sun policy implementation in Danish kindergartens

In 2007, the Danish Cancer Society and the Tryg Fonden launched a campaign to prevent skin cancer and melanoma. As a part of this intervention programme, the Danish Cancer Society prepared a ''sun policy'', which recommends how children in Danish kindergartens can be protected from the sun. The aim of this study was to determine the factors that influence a decision to implement the sun policy in Danish kindergartens. We conducted a comparative qualitative study. Data were collected at semi-structured interviews with the principals of five kindergartens with a sun policy and five without. The key factor in making a decision is the priority given to the sun policy by the principal, which in turn depends on the principal's perception of his or her resources. Further factors are the principal's attitude toward parental responsibility and media focus on sun protection. Principals must be convinced of the importance of a written sun policy. A mailed reminder containing arguments about its importance to accompany the draft sun policy might reinforce the formulation and implementation of sun policies nationwide.

Children's Development from a Cultural–Historical Approach: Children's Activity in Everyday Local Settings as Foundation for Their Development

A central dilemma in developmental psychology has been to combine general concepts with research of the individual child in all her complexity in everyday life activities. Psychologists such as Riegel, Bronfenbrenner, Burman, Morss, Hedegaard, and Walkerdine have criticized research approaches that study child development from a functional view. Sociologists and anthropologists, such as Corsaro, James, Jenks, Prout, and Qvotrup have instead argued for childhood studies as the alternative to developmental psychology. None of these approaches is alone sufficient; instead, it is important to formulate a theoretical approach of child and youth development that combines general psychological concepts with research of children and youth in concrete settings, such as home or school. The aim of this article is to argue that this will be possible by building on Vygotsky's cultural–historical theories of the zone of proximal development and developmental crises. A theory of children's development should include more directly than it has in the past the practice in children's everyday institutions and the conditions the society give children for development and at the same time attempt to grasp the child's perspective. A theory of children's development has to be anchored in societal values, that is, what different institutions value as a good life. Examples from my research on children in Danish kindergartens and immigrant children in Danish schools are used to exemplify the arguments.