Den pedagogiska samlingen i förskoleklassen. Barns olika sätt att erfara och hantera svårigheter

Abstract

The aim of the study is to identify children’s different ways of experiencing and handling difficulties in the pre-school class’s pedagogical circle time and increase our understanding of children’s actions in a situation they regard as difficult. It is a question of studying children’s experiencing in relation to what and how aspects, how difficulties are manifested in the actions of children and children’s and teacher’s perspectives on this. Questions based on the aim are formulated as follow: What do children experience as difficult in pedagogical circle time? How do children handle these difficulties? How do children act to solve these difficulties? How do teacher’s act to help the children solve these difficulties? The theoretical starting points consist of the developmental pedagogic theory, a special needs communicative, relation-oriented perspective and the symbolic interactionism. The focus is on the concepts of variation with respect to the what and how aspect in children’s experiencing (developmental pedagogy), participation, communication and learning (a communicative, relation-oriented perspective) and action/symbol, interaction, language and identity/self (symbolic interactionism). Children’s perspectives and a pre-school class for all children are reflected in the theoretical starting-points. Children’s perspectives are a common denominator in all three theoretical starting-points. The research group of 115 children consisted of 15 different pre-school classes in 12 different schools. Sixty-one of the children were girls and 54 boys. Data collection methods are: video recording/observation using a digital video camera with a monitor and feedback on videotaped observation – interviews with children in the form of talk about questions based on the videotaped circle time context.

The theoretical starting points/analytical concepts are discussed together in order to show the breadth provided by the data. If only a theoretical starting point had been used, it would not have been possible to describe the picture provided by the data to the same extent. One starting point shows one way of describing a situation while several starting points describe and bring out several aspects of a situation. The three theoretical starting points/analytical concepts are research approaches that, together and individually, emphasise children’s experience-based world/perspectives. To sum up, the analysis shows what children on a collective level experience as difficulties and how they handle difficulties. The children’s different actions in the interaction with adults and other children reveal varying ways of experiencing and handling difficulties. Difficulties emerge when there is insufficient interaction, communication and participation between teachers, children and task/content in the pedagogical circle time situation. The results in the present study show that in the interaction, sufficient attention is not always paid to children’s perspectives. Communication is given less space and the children’s participation is thus limited to a large extent. The children’s perception of themselves as regards self-esteem and the ability to learn is not treated from the children’s perspective to the extent desirable.