Swedish Preschool Research Articles

To teach writing: Teachers' perspectives on how to promote children’s writing development in the Swedish preschool class

This study focuses on how teachers in Swedish preschool classes describe their work to promote children’s early writing. The research questions are the following: According to teachers, in what daily activities are children given the opportunity to write? How do teachers describe their support for children’s writing processes? The empirical data was collected from interviews with twelve teachers working in preschool classes in seven different Swedish municipalities. The result shows that preschool class teachers express how they work to promote both individual and group writing. It reveals two different approaches regarding guiding children to develop their writing skills. First approach puts emphasis on working to develop creative and functional writing based on the child’s own interests, life experiences and level of knowledge. The second approach is primarily characterised by working on technical abilities; forming letters of the alphabet and developing the child’s phonological awareness. It was also found that there are teachers who use both approaches in their teaching. Teachers utilise various support strategies to develop children’s writing skills. These encompass everything from individual and group activities to the use of various artefacts in the teaching environment. The support that teachers offer children might be divided into high-level and low-level support.

Konstitutionen av den speciella pedagogiken i en barncentrerad förskola för alla

This paper identifies and analyzes what constitutes special education in the revised Swedish preschool curriculum. The paper also contributes with an analytical mode of understanding political, as well as other, documents, in, for example, an educational system. The analytical strategy is mainly built upon discourse theory and discourse analysis, using the ideas of Ernesto Lacalu, Chantal Mouffe and Michel Foucault. The results show a fortified hegemonic discourse about a preschool for all children, where child-centred and inclusive approaches are dominant and where special education, to a large extent, is constituted by more management, stimulation and special support. The paper raises questions about the possible effects the hegemonic discourse may contribute to.Nyckelord: diskurs, diskursanalys, diskursteori, läroplan, specialpedagogik, inkludering, pedagogik, styrdokument, svensk förskola för alla barn, utbildning

Physical Activity Level Using Doubly-Labeled Water in Relation to Body Composition and Physical Fitness in Preschoolers.

Background and objectives: There is a lack of studies investigating associations of physical activity level (PAL) and activity energy expenditure (AEE) using the doubly-labeled water (DLW) method with body composition and physical fitness in young children. Thus, we aimed to examine cross-sectional associations of PAL and AEE with body composition indices and physical fitness components in Swedish preschool children. Materials and methods: PAL was calculated as total energy expenditure measured using DLW divided by the predicted basal metabolic rate in 40 children aged 5.5 (standard deviation 0.2) years. AEE was calculated as total energy expenditure minus basal metabolic rate and the thermic effect of food, and divided by fat-free mass. Body composition was assessed using the 3-component model by combining measurements based on isotope dilution and air-displacement plethysmography. Physical fitness (muscular strength, motor fitness, and cardiorespiratory fitness) was evaluated using the PREFIT test battery. Multiple linear regression models were conducted. Results: PAL and AEE were negatively associated with body mass index, percent body fat, and fat mass index (PAL: standardized β −0.35, −0.41, and −0.45, all p < 0.036; AEE: standardized β −0.44, −0.44, and −0.47, all p < 0.006, respectively). Furthermore, PAL and AEE were positively associated with the standing long jump test (PAL: standardized β 0.37, p = 0.017; AEE: standardized β 0.38, p = 0.014). There were no statistically significant associations found regarding PAL or AEE with fat-free mass index or any other physical fitness test. Conclusions: Greater PAL and AEE at the age 5.5 were significantly associated with body fatness and improved lower-body muscular strength. Therefore, increasing physical activity, and thus energy expenditure, at young ages may be beneficial for preventing overweight/obesity. However, further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to confirm the results.

Inclusive Classroom Profile (ICP): a cultural validation and investigation of its perceived usefulness in the context of the Swedish preschool

ABSTRACT The Inclusive Classroom Profile (ICP) is a structured observation instrument. It has been developed to support high-quality early childhood inclusion of children with special educational needs and disabilities. The aim of this study is to examine the cultural validity of the instrument in Swedish preschools and to investigate its perceived usefulness in a Swedish preschool context. Ten special educators, who conducted professional dialogues with preschool teachers and other preschool staff members in a Swedish municipality, were enrolled. The instrument was compared with the Swedish national curriculum for the preschool, and the perceptions of special educators were collected by way of dialogue seminar method. Thematic analyses were conducted. The results of the study show that the instrument, with few exceptions, is valid in Sweden, and that the instrument can be useful for special educators conducting professional dialogues about early childhood inclusion with preschool teachers and other preschool staff members. The study has relevance for those who work with early childhood inclusion in Sweden as well as elsewhere, and for those who plan to validate the instrument and investigate its perceived usefulness in a context pertinent to them. High-quality inclusion is on the agenda in many nations, and a Sustainable Development Goal.

Children’s crying in play conflicts

The study examines young children's play and adults' responses to children's peer play conflicts (in preschools in Sweden) that result in crying. It shows how educators' participation in the resolution of children's play conflicts constitutes socialization practices that focus on moral and emotional aspects of children's conduct. Children's crying has previously been investigated primarily from psychological perspectives. Interactional studies have highlighted that children use different communicative resources in their play interactions and conflicts. Crying, however, has not been investigated in an educational context and not in its own right. The present study adopts social interactional and sociocultural perspectives on children's development and learning. The study is based on video ethnography from a Swedish preschool for children aged 1-4 years. The findings demonstrate that young children use crying as a communicative act that invites educators' active response to a moral transgression committed by a peer. The children use crying to position themselves as victims or perpetrators in a conflict that educators are called upon to resolve, while at the same time mediating between children. The analysis shows that children configure their crying as an embodied and publicly visible act to be noticed by educators, whose responses then accomplish the moral framing of play conflict.

Learning to apologize

This article explores the apology practices that occur among young children, aged 1-4 years, and their preschool teachers in a Swedish preschool. More specifically, it aims to analyse how apology events are framed and interactively accomplished, and how children reproduce apology in peer play. Earlier studies have shown that the apology practices of adults and children have different agendas, although children's apology practices echo those of adults. Approaching the participants' perspectives, the analyses show that the apology practices at preschool have a ritualized framework. This consists of (i) clarifying the source of the conflict, (ii) highlighting the moral order, and (iii) verbalizing and embodying the apology. The analyses show how the children transform the apology practices into their pretend play, whereby they display moral stances and get support for individual aims.

Begynnande naturvetenskap och könade kroppar i förskolans utelek

Drawing on new materialist thought (Barad 2003, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2014), this study explores preschool children’s gendered becomings as they play and explore together with two large boulders in a natural setting. The study takes its point of departure in emergent science (Siraj-Blatchford 2001) which refers to science as a social practice that is already explored by children’s daily play. Data for the project was constructed during a field study in a Swedish preschool with 25 five-year old children. The focus of the field study was the children’s play and explorations together with the preschool environment, during activities not specifically guided by teachers. The findings show how also natural materials, as the boulders in this study, can take part in and shape, both the children’s scientific explorations and their gendered becomings. This means that the ways that a child managed to explore and become was dependent on if and how the child managed to co-act and play together with the boulders and friction. However, not only the boulders, but also gender norms functioned as co-creators in this process. This goes against the common thought of children’s play in nature as “free and equal”, a notion that is not often questioned. Studies exploring children’s play and learning outdoors often lack gender perspectives, especially when science is also in focus. One of the article’s conclusions is the need for preschool teachers to engage in how children explore emergent science together with the natural/ material-discursive surroundings. That is, how different natural materials co-act with gender norms in different ways, moment by moment, and thus enable or prevent children from engaging with science and scientific phenomena.

Too much, too little: preschool teachers’ perceptions of the boundaries of adequate touching

ABSTRACT In the present study we focus on physical touch that is judged to be just outside what is considered to be ‘normal’. We explore how preschool teachers describe and explain situations where educators give children too much or too little touching. Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with 30 qualified preschool teachers working in Swedish preschools. When the informants talk about situations where educators give children too much touching, the descriptions involve a behaviour that does not lie within the preschool mission, teachers who do not set boundaries, and actions that have disadvantages for the children. On the other hand, situations where educators give children too little touching are described solely with reference to the teacher and that person’s fear or cold personality. The results have been interpreted in relation to the discourse of preschool professionalisation and Hochschild’s theory of emotional labour.

Swedish Final Year Early Childhood Preservice Teachers' Attitudes, Concerns and Intentions towards Inclusion

Abstract This article explores ninety-seven (n=97) Swedish Early Childhood (EC) preservice teachers' attitudes, concerns, and intentions to include children with disabilities in regular classrooms. A six-part self-reporting questionnaire was used to examine participants' attitudes, concerns, efficacy, and intentions toward inclusion. The results showed that although the Swedish EC preservice teachers' in this study expressed 'some' concern about working with children the results indicated a high degree of teacher efficacy. To determine predictors of participants' intentions and use of inclusive practices a series of regression analysis were undertaken. Knowledge of local legislation emerged as significant predictor of participants' intention scores. Teaching efficacy scores were significant predictors for both intention and use of inclusive practices. The results are discussed in the context of the Swedish idea ‘a school for all' with a focus on the Swedish preschool teacher education program.

Measuring the effects of feedback from inspections on cleanliness in Swedish pre-schools – A field experiment

High hygienic standards are essential to avoid the spread of infectious diseases, not least in environments with many children. This paper uses an experimental design to examine the impact of feedback information following a public health safety inspection on future behavior of pre-schools in three Swedish municipalities. We find no effects of information at the municipality level. However, we find that pre-schools that were informed about a bad result improved more than comparable pre-schools that received no feedback. Conversely, informed pre-schools with a good result worsened their results compared to similarly performing uninformed pre-schools. Our results thus lend support to the so called “boomerang effect”.

Managing the unmanageable: curriculum challenges and teacher strategies in multicultural preschools in Sweden

In its political ambitions and pedagogical spirit to address an increasingly diverse population, the Swedish national curriculum for the preschool contains contradictory or even conflicting goals. On the one hand, the curriculum stipulates openness to, tolerance for and appreciation of cultural, ethnic, religious and social differences, and respect for the unique background of children. On the other hand, it stresses universal human rights and the fundamental values of Swedish society. How preschool teachers work with and make sense of such contradictory or even conflicting goals in everyday practice is the focus of this text. The research questions are: (1) How do preschool teachers describe the challenges they face in their daily work when they attempt to honour the stipulations of the curriculum? (2) Which strategies do they describe as using to manage these challenges? The empirical material consists of 14 focus group interviews with 41 preschool teachers from two highly ethnically and culturally diverse urban areas of metropolitan Stockholm. Results suggest that there are a number of recurring preschool situations where cultural and religious differences lead to dilemmas and potential friction between children, preschool teachers and parents. Results also show that the preschool curriculum provides little guidance and instead the preschool teachers must develop their own strategies to handle children’s and parents’ expectations and demands, for instance by using the children as cultural intermediaries. Overall, the preschool teachers adopt strategies that enable them to avoid “difficult” situations, which in effect risks placing the challenges on the shoulders of the children.

Inte som i skolan - pedagoger positionerar naturvetenskap i förskolan &lt;br/&gt;Preschool teachers talk about science – Positioning themselves and positioning science

This article discusses how preschool teachers, who include a scientific content in their practice, describe their practice and their view of science in preschool. The study is based on 20 interviews in 9 Swedish preschools. The theoretical and analytical framework combine "communities of practice"(Lave &amp; Wenger) and "positioning theory" (Harré &amp; Langehove). The stories reveal a strong position for the pre-school curriculum and traditions. A prominent storyline is that Science in preschool is something different from science in school. This includes an anti-authoritarian view with a focus on "the competent child". The preschool teachers affirm fantasy, creativity and intuition as a part of science and they position science as easy to access. They also position themselves as pedagogues competent to manage science in preschool. One of the dilemmas is about letting children’s interests and initiatives drive the activities while educators curriculum- based goals have certain intentions to fulfill.

Affectionate touch and care: embodied intimacy, compassion and control in early childhood education

ABSTRACTRelational care, interpersonal intimacy and emotional attunement are crucial for children’s development and wellbeing in ECEC. The present study examines how they are enacted in a Swedish preschool (for 1–5-year-olds) through recurrent adult-child physical conduct, i.e. affectionate and affectionate-controlling touch. The data consist of 24 hours of video-recorded observations of everyday activities. The study shows that educators’ Affectionate-Comforting touch was used for emotion regulation as compassionate response to children’s distress; Amicable touch engaged children in spontaneous affection; and, Affectionate-Controlling touch was used to mildly control and direct the child’s bodily conduct and participation in preschool activities, or to mitigate the educators’ verbal disciplining. The study demonstrates the emotional complexity of ECEC enacted through the practices of haptic sociality. It supports the holistic policies arguing that embodied relational care should be integrated in ECEC, contrary to ideas that connect professionalism with emotional distance and lack of physical contact.

Enchantment in storytelling: Co-operation and participation in children's aesthetic experience

In early childhood education, storytelling has traditionally been seen as a learning activity that lays the groundwork for children's vocabulary and literacy development. The present study uses video-recorded storytelling events to examine young children's emotional involvement and aesthetic experiences during adult storytelling in a regular Swedish preschool for 1- to 3.5-year-olds. By adopting a multimodal interactional perspective on human sense-making, socialization, and literacy (Goodwin, 2017), it contributes to research examining multimodality in early childhood literacy (Kyratzis & Johnson, 2017). The analytical focus is on co-operation in aesthetic experience: the teachers’ ways of organizing an entertaining, affectively valorized and ‘enchanting’ storytelling, and the children audience's verbal and nonverbal participation (Goodwin & Goodwin, 2004).The study shows that teachers used ‘lighthouse’ gaze, props, marked prosody and pauses to invite the child audience to participate, join the attentive multiparty participation frameworks and share the affective layering of story. The young children exploited the recognizability of the story and contributed by co-participating through bodily repetitions, choral completions, elaborating or volunteering anticipatory contributions, and pre-empting the upcoming story segment. The study suggests that through adult-child co-operation, the embodied telling becomes a site for children's affective and aesthetic literacy socialization.

Bidirectional Collaborations in an Intervention Randomized Controlled Trial Performed in the Swedish Early Childhood Education Context

ABSTRACTWithin the field of developmental science, there is a general agreement of the need to work together across academic disciplinary boundaries in order to advance the understandings of how to optimize child development and learning. However, experience also shows that such collaborations may be challenging. This paper reports on the experiences of bidirectional collaboration between researchers in a multidisciplinary research team and between researchers and stakeholders, in the first randomized controlled trial in Swedish preschool. The objective of the trial was to investigate the effects of two pedagogical learning strategies evaluating language, communication, attention, executive functions and early math. The interdisciplinary team includes researchers from early childhood education, linguistics, developmental psychology and cognitive neuro science. Educational researchers and theorists within the field of early childhood education in Sweden have during the last two decades mainly undertaken small-scale qualitative praxis-oriented and participative research. There is a widespread skepticism with regards to some of the core principles in controlled intervention methodologies, including a strong resistance towards individual testing of children. Consequently unanticipated disagreements and conflicts arose within the research team, as RCT methodology requires the measurement of effects pre and post the intervention. The aim of this article is to discuss the conditions for bidirectional collaboration both between researchers and stakeholders and between researchers in the research team. The findings illustrate strategies and negotiations that emerged in order to address ontological and epistemological controversies and disagreements. These include (a) the negotiation of research ethics, (b) making divergences visible and learning from each other, (c) using a multi-epistemological and methodological approach as a complement to the RCT design and (d) the negotiation of research problems that are shared between educators and researchers.

Attention difficulties and physical dysfunction common in children with complex congenital malformations: a study of preschool children with VACTERL association.

AimKnowledge on the neurodevelopmental and physical function in children with vertebral defects, anorectal malformations, cardiac defects, tracheo‐oesophageal fistula, renal and limb malformations (VACTERL) is scarce. We evaluated Swedish preschool children with VACTERL and identified whether they would need extra support in school.MethodsFrom 2015 to 2017, we recruited children aged 5–7 with VACTERL association from the paediatric surgical centre at the University Children's Hospital at Uppsala. Neurodevelopmental function was assessed by age‐appropriate intelligence and visual and auditory attention tests, and the children's behaviour and attention were observed by an experienced psychologist. Physical function was evaluated through parental interviews and examinations. Data on patient characteristics, including any surgery and anaesthesia, were extracted from medical records.ResultsOf the 13 eligible families, 10 agreed to participate. Intelligence was within the normal range for all children, but attention difficulties were found in eight of the children, requiring adjustments at school, and two of these were later diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. All children had physical dysfunctions that affected their daily nutrition, bowel or bladder functions.ConclusionAttention difficulties and physical dysfunction were common in Swedish preschool children aged 5–7 with VACTERL and they would need support and adjustments when they started school.

Preschool teachers as keepers of traditions and agents of change

ABSTRACT According to the Swedish Preschool Curriculum, one of the tasks of the preschool is to pass on a cultural heritage, its values, traditions and history, language and knowledge, from one generation to the next. The formulation indicates that cultural heritage plays an important role in defining the tasks of preschool teachers as far as the transmission of cultural norms is concerned. The aim of the overall study was to explore how Swedish preschool teachers implement and reflect on the task of transmitting a cultural heritage. This paper has its focus on how a particular cultural tradition, Easter, is celebrated in two preschools. The empirical data consists of 227 min video data from two preschools. The video data were analysed through qualitative content analysis with a focus on how different semiotic resources, actions and artefacts are used to perform Easter. The different modes of enacting traditions are used as instruments of socialisation into a cultural heritage as well as means of actualisation of a preschool pedagogy. While preschool teachers can be seen as agents of change who challenge some of the ways of celebrating a tradition, they are also agents of national reproduction. Thus, the teachers both enact the curriculum and build a bricolage of elements, some of which represent continuity, while others represent change.

Young children's play: a matter of advanced strategies among peers

ABSTRACTThis study explores how 3–5 year-old children negotiate participation rights during peer play in a preschool in Sweden. The interest is on how they build relations moment-by-moment. I specifically analyze how they negotiate participation rights with a focus on how they include and exclude each other in the ongoing activity. This is an ethnographic study, and the method is inspired by conversation analysis where the verbal and non-verbal interaction is studied sequentially. The findings are that even very young children are capable of advanced social acts when playing together. Such capacities may include face-threatening acts but also solidarity towards one or more participants. It is important that face-threatening strategies are recognized and addressed as soon as possible because children can need help to find alternative ways to behave when in conflict with one another. Otherwise there is a risk that such strategies, when repeated, cause harm to those children exposed.

Mathematizing in preschool: children’s participation in geometrical discourse

ABSTRACTThis study explores preschool children’s mathematizing in everyday block play activities. Building on an ethnomethodological and multimodal conversation analytic framework, we explore how geometry (i.e. spatiality, shape, and symmetry) is actualized in children’s verbal and embodied interaction with their peers, pedagogues, and material environment. The selected data are drawn from a video ethnographic study in a Swedish preschool in which a boy and a girl play with a magnetic construction toy. The results of the study demonstrate how the participants orient to spatial locations, properties, dimensions, orientations, transformations, and shapes as they build a house. The children are shown to rely upon verbal and embodied resources such as deictics (e.g. here, there, these) and pointing gestures as geometrical aspects are actualized in their interaction. The study contributes with knowledge on preschool children’s everyday mathematizing, in particular, children’s appropriation of geometric discourse as it emerges in the unfolding flow of interaction.

Health, public sector service use and related costs of Swedish preschool children: results from the Children and Parents in Focus trial

Despite Sweden’s good child health statistics, data on the mental health and wellbeing of Swedish preschool children is scarce and not routinely collected in healthcare. The study aimed to: identify the proportion of preschool children with mental health and somatic problems, the public sector services used by these children and whether they differ by type of problems, investigate whether other factors affect service use, and estimate the costs associated with these services. This study used cross-sectional data on a sample of 3175 children aged 3–5 from the “Children and Parents in Focus trial”. Data on service use, child health and demographics were obtained from primary caregivers. Child mental health was assessed by both primary caregivers and teachers. 8.9% of the sample reported mental health problems, and approximately 1% had comorbid somatic and mental health problems. Over 50% of the preschoolers used any service, with school assistant being the most frequently used. The average annual cost per child, regardless of health status, was US$921, with 75% of the costs accruing at school. The presence of both somatic and mental health problems predicted higher service use, in particular extra services used at school and at home (mean annual cost US$13826 and US$1583, respectively). Children with comorbid problems accounted for the highest mean costs. Mental health problems among preschool children were particularly high compared to studies from other countries. There is a need to strengthen school mental health services to engage in proactive early identification of children with mental health problems so that appropriate care is provided.Trial registration number: ISRCTN16513449. Registered 23 July 2013.