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Description: This paper raises questions of ideas of gender related work in pre-school with examples from Swedish pre-schools.During the last years the interest to develop a gender-perspective in pre-school has grown in Sweden, both theoretically and in practice. The inspiration has partly come from some pre-schools in the city of Gavle who started to examine their work from a gender point of view some years ago. Partly some research concerning gender and education gave inspiration too. The Ministry of Education has promoted projects in pre-school who intended to work with gender and equality economically. The Swedish Curriculum has some writings about gender and equality. The open formulation of the Swedish Curriculum opens up for the local teachers to work with gender in a variety of ways in their pedagogical activity. The pre-schools in Gavle documented their work in books and the ministry of Education made a report to discuss, develop and give some guide-lines to a gender -perspective in Swedish pre-schools. We regard this paper as a part of an intended research-project concerning gender-perspective in pre-schools who actually try to work in a "gender-sensitive" way. Our main interest in this paper is to examine texts that the pre-schools meet and use in their gender-related work. We are interested to find what discourses that circulate on the levels of ideology and inspiration. There are a number of books and reports that circulate in the gender and equality- projects and in days for education in schools and pre-schools and so on in Sweden. The books and reports are: "Genuspedaogik" (Svaleryd, 2002), Flickor, pojkar pedagoger (Wahlström,), Den könade förskolan ( SOU 2004:115) Läroplan för förskolan (Lpo 94) We are interested in three areas of gender aspects related to introducing gender-perspectives in pre-school. Number one is what kind of theoretical points of departure we can find in the texts. Number two concerns what experience from the work in the preschool that is presented in the texts. The third area concerns what the pre-schools according to the texts should work with and how they are supposed to do that.1. What kind of theories of gender can we trace in the texts? How do they look upon how to become a girl or a boy?2. What kind of experience and documentation from the pre-school groups show in the texts.3. What kind of issues and steps are regarded as important in their work with gender and equality?What kind of gender-related problems or issues are not visible in these texts?The project as a whole has at post-structural feminist theory as frame-work. We lean on work by Walkerdine (1990), Davies & Banks (1995), Thorne (1993), Mac an ghaill (1994) Conell (1995). From the Swedish context we use works of Weiner & Berge (2001), Öhrn (2002), Odelfors (1996) and Karlson, (2003a,b). Karlson argues that educational settings are places where contradictory gender messages reach the children (2003a). Mac an ghaill (1994) points out that schools are part of the society and the ideologies in the society will show in school contexts as well as in other places. We will draw on this discussion and elaborate it in relation to the preschool context. Our analysis is a part in trying to grasp some of these contradictory messages that reach pre-school.
To find our answers to this study we do a kind of analysis of discourses. We ask questions to the texts in order to find repetitive sentences related to our interests. We are also interested in what we cannot find in these texts, what is outside these discourses (Foucault, 2003). We intend to compare our findings with research in the area.
When scrutinising the described books and reports that are used in the context of the preschool, we can detect a diversity of gender-related ideals, ideas and issues to work with. Theoretical and practical aspects may meet in the literature mentioned. We expect to find some discourses of gender and equality that circulate in the pre-schools and out-side them. Discourses that may be of importance in the discussions concerning the work of integration of gender and equality perspectives in Swedish pre-schools.
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