This study focuses on how children's transitions to and from preschool classes are organized in different schools. Principal’s arguments for this organization were sought via a web-based survey and analyzed using the frame factor theory in addition to theories of practical sense and the concept of continuity. The results show that children tend to make more transitions between social communities the younger they are. The distribution of the principal’s answers show that the majority of them, because of external conditions, split the preschool groups to new classes in the transition to preschool class. However, the same movements are not indicated in the transition to first grade. The results show how the work of organizing chidren’s transitions represent a complex web of external actual conditions as the number of children and the recruitment area of the school, the internal logics and ideas about what is best for children and best for continued learning as well as the school's own traditions of working with transitions.
This article focuses the Swedish preschool class and the transitions from preschool to compulsory school, out from children’s perspectives. The study indicates that children, in these transitions, are constructing identities such as future pupils, Ex preschoolers, playful preschool class children and adjusted and responsible pupils. It’s indicated that children’s ways of defining themselves, and their markings of borders between the institutions, are changing over time and are depending on the current context. The study also highlights how Swedish children conduct two school entries where they have to reconstruct both their identities and their understanding of institutional borders.
The preschool class is an educational programme that has been created through an educational reform in Sweden in the late 1990s. The purpose was to construct a bridge between preschool and primary school, where the two institutions together would create a “new pedagogy”. My study of teacher identities in preschool class shows that the teachers are using strategies to mark their differences to other teachers. One strategy is to enhance in-groups and out-groups. These strategies also construct the preschool class as a security zone where the teachers distance themselves from other teachers, in contrast to the educational reform.
I den här artikeln riktar vi uppmärksamhet mot uttrycket matematisera, myntat av matematikdidaktikern Hans Freudenthal och ofta använt i beskrivningar av förskolebarns matematiklärande. I artikeln problematiseras Freudenthals matematikdidaktiska ansats med fokus på hur matematisera framträder i undervisning där lek har en central roll. Mer explicit studeras hur form och innehåll i tre lekaktiviteter (94 videoinspelade observationer) tillsammans med barns och förskollärares ageranden möjliggör matematiserande utan att lekens ursprungliga värden förringas utan snarare vidgas eller fördjupas. Resultaten visar att undervisning som möjliggör matematiserande är en didaktisk utmaning där barns agency i lekaktiviteten, deras kunskaper om lekens struktur samt deras tidigare matematikkunskaper framstår som kritiskt. Pedagogiska implikationer är vikten av barns frihet att ta initiativ till att undersöka och använda matematik som är relevant för leken samt hur förskollärarens aktiva deltagande i leken främjar barnens agency.
From different documentation situation the aim of this study is to investigate the focus of the documentation as well as the communication between preschool teachers and children in these situations. The research questions are: What is the focus of the documentation? What characterizes the communication between the teachers and the children when these teachers at the same time are documenting? To interpret and understand this communication Habermas’ concepts of communicative and strategic action are used. Data consists of video observations, where 157 minutes of recordings have been analyzed. 30 children, 1-3 years, and their 7 preschool teachers have participated in the study. The results show that it is mainly children’s achievements that are documented and that the preschool teachers either become silent observers or eager advocators of a particular discovery. What is communicated and documented by the teachers have a high degree of abstraction, and the communication is of a strategic character.