Browsing by Author "Pihl, Agneta"

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Children retelling stories. Responding, reshaping, and remembering in early childhood education and care
(2022-11-14) Pihl, Agneta
Oral storytelling is a prevalent cultural practice for sense-making. Through stories, people get to know themselves, others, and the world around them. Children are introduced to this practice at home and in early childhood education and care (ECEC). The present research concerns oral retelling in a Swedish preschool setting. Its overarching interest is how children orally retell stories they have been told. More specifically, how processes of responding, remembering, and reshaping unfold in children’s retelling activities are of analytical interest. The thesis consists of three empirical studies involving children aged three to five years. The analytical focus of Study I is on whether, and if so how, the children consider the understanding of the listener(s) when retelling stories. The analytical focus of Study II is on how the children remember, and reshape, stories in retelling activities. The analytical focus of Study III is on how the children indicate the intellectual and emotional states of fictional characters when they retell stories. The theoretical framework informing these studies is a sociocultural perspective, conceptualizing communication, learning, and remembering as contingent on cultural tools and practices. The empirical data consist of 21 video recordings of storytelling activities. Analytical work was guided by the principles of Interaction Analysis. Analysis of the meta-markers children use in their storytelling reveals that they do take into account the understanding of their listener(s) when retelling stories, if not consistently so (Study I). An analysis of how one focus child retells the same story in different constellations shows how she remembers details from the story told by the teacher and the very manner of how it was told and how she transforms the story into what more readily makes sense to her (Study II). Finally, the findings clarify how the children indicate the intellectual and emotional states of the characters in the stories they retell. They do this in three ways: through explicating (mental state terms); gesturing and facial expressions; and sound symbolism (Study III). The thesis has significance for our understanding of children, their storytelling, responding, remembering, and processes of reshaping. The findings here contribute to a more general reconceptualization of children’s capacities to understand. The thesis has implications for early childhood education and care as a socially just practice, valuing all the communicative means children use.
En läroplan för alla? Förskollärares syn på att utveckla förmågan att kommunicera hos barn med autism
(2012-05-30) Pihl, Agneta; University of Gothenburg/Department of education and special education; Göteborgs universitet
Syfte: Syftet med studien var att belysa hur fyra förskollärare beskriver arbetet med att utveckla kommunikationsförmågan hos barn med autismspektrumtillstånd, utifrån förskolans läroplan. Studien utgår från följande frågeställningar: • Hur beskriver förskollärarna möjligheter och hinder i strävan mot de kommunikativa målen i förskolans läroplan när det gäller barn med autismspektrumtillstånd? • Hur genomför förskollärarna arbetet i barngruppen så att barnen med autismspektrumtillstånd stimuleras och utmanas i sin språk- och kommunikationsutveckling? • Vilken hjälp tycker förskollärarna att de själva behöver och får för att kunna sträva efter att varje barn utvecklar sin förmåga att kommunicera med andra? Metod: I studien används en kvalitativ metod. Genom halvstrukturerade intervjufrågor undersöker jag hur fyra förskollärare med egna ord beskriver sitt arbete med barn med autismspektrumtillstånd (AST). Respondenterna har flera års erfarenhet av barn med AST i förskolan. Två pedagoger arbetar på resursavdelningar och två på specialavdelningar. Resultat: Resultatet visar att förskollärarna är övervägande positiva till möjligheterna att sträva mot målen. Målen i förskolans läroplan är relevanta eftersom de är formulerade som strävansmål, även om många barn med autismspektrumtillstånd är begränsade av en låg utvecklingsnivå. Respondenterna beskrev att de genom sitt förhållningssätt, tydlighet och struktur anpassade verksamheten för barn med AST. Genom att dela in barnen i smågrupper skapade man möjligheter till kommunikation, lek och samspel. Brist på tid och barngruppens storlek upplevdes som hinder på resursavdelningarna. De flesta tyckte att de fick för lite stöd i form av fortbildning och handledning utifrån men de upplevde att de fick värdefullt stöd från arbetslaget. På resursavdelningarna saknade man också relevant stöd från förskolechefen. Resultatet pekar mot att förskolans läroplan kan behöva kompletteras med riktlinjer för adekvata arbetssätt för barn med AST. En lyckad inkludering kräver resurser och gedigen kunskap om funktionsnedsättningen hos både pedagoger och förskolechefer.
Narrating in early childhood education as a responsive, re-creative, and remembering practice
(2018) Pihl, Agneta
The interest of the present thesis concerns how children orally retell stories they have been told. This research is carried out in dialogue with two classic research traditions in developmental psychology: one regarding whether children understand, and take into account when communicating, that others have different experience and understanding than themselves, and one regarding remembering conceptualized as a creative and sense-making practice. The thesis consists of two empirical studies conducted in a preschool setting with children 4 to 5 years old. The analytical focus of study I is on whether, and if so how, the children consider the understanding of the listener(s) when retelling stories. The analytical focus of study II is on how the children remember, and perhaps reshape, stories in retelling activities. The theoretical framework informing these studies is a sociocultural perspective, conceptualizing learning and remembering as contingent on cultural tools and practices. The empirical data consist of 19 video recordings of storytelling activities. Analytical work was guided by the principles of Interaction Analysis. Analyzing the meta-markers children use in their storytelling reveals that the children do take into account the understanding of their listener(s) when retelling stories, if not consistently so (Study I). Analyzing how one focus child retells the same story in different constellations show how she remembers details from the story told by the teacher and the very manner of how the story was told, as well as transforms the story to what more readily makes sense (Study II). The thesis has significance for our understanding of children, their storytelling and remembering. More specifically, the findings contribute to a more general reconceptualization of children’s capacities to understand. An important implication for early childhood education is that when supporting children’s storytelling and remembering, teachers also support children’s sense making and vice versa.