Interpretations and implementations of a revised national policy discourse in early childhood education – a Swedish example

Author(s):

Anita Eriksson(presenting / submitting)Dennis Beach(presenting)Ann-Katrin Svensson

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

19. Ethnography

Format:

Paper

Session Information

19 SES 06, Ethnographies of Educational Policies and Social Change

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

15:30-17:00

Room:

K4.12

Chair:

Christoph Maeder

Contribution

In Sweden as in most other European countries the presence of a discourse of a knowledge-based-economy has meant that the policy area for Early Childhood Education has become an important issue for many governments to control. In Sweden both the National School Law (SFS 2010: 800) and the preschool curriculum (Skolverket, 2010) underwent a revision in 2010 initiated by the government. From a political point of view the revision was expected to increase the level of knowledge in compulsory school pupils by raising the educational quality in Early Childhood Education. To achieve this, the revision of the National School Law and the preschool curriculum implied both higher demands regarding quality assurance in respect to the educational activities in preschools as well as explicit demands on educational quality of the subject-related educational content. From a government point of view these demands were expected to be reached by providing preschool teachers with an expanded and clarified register of professional responsibility grounded upon their formal professional university education. Important to highlight in this context is that the main part of the teams in Swedish preschools consists of university educated preschool teachers and upper secondary educated child-care workers.

In terms of responsibility the revision meant a discursive change from the previous joint team responsibility for the educational activities to a special and increased preschool teacher responsibility for educational activities. This change can also be described in terms of a discursive hierarchisation in which the preschool teacher was given an overall educational responsibility, while the joint responsibility of teams was reduced to carrying out the everyday preschool practice. The paper deals with questions about what happened when this discursive change in the national policy documents was interpreted and implemented on a local preschool level in four different municipalities in four different preschools. More specifically the purpose is to investigate how the clarified and changed responsibility for preschool teachers was interpreted and implemented by local government officials and interpreted and implemented by the heads of the preschools, preschool teachers and child-care workers. The following questions have been addressed:

How do the local government officials interpret, implement and support the pre-school teachers in their increased responsibility?
How do heads, preschool teachers and child-care workers interpret and talk about the preschool teachers and the teams responsibility?
How and in what way the national policy discourse is interpreted and implemented by heads, preschool teachers and child-care workers in the preschools every day practice?

The analysis of data has been informed by theories of professions (Brante, 2013; Freidson, 2001; Svensson, 2011) and education sociological theory (Bernstein, 1995, 2000, 2003). Theories of professions contributed to our understanding of the way government officials interpreted, implemented and supported pre-school teachers in their increased responsibility. In this we considered how their actions would support or prevent an increased professionalization. Bernstein's theoretical concepts horizontal and vertical discourse were used in the analysis of the way preschool staff interpreted and talked about the preschool teacher's and the team’s responsibility respectively. The concepts of framing and re-contextualisation contributed to our understanding of how and in what way the national policy discourse has been interpreted and implemented. Solbrekkes and Englunds (2011, 2014) concept of professional responsibility and professional accountability has been used in the analysis of what kind of responsibility is expressed.

Method

The research presented in this paper is a part of a Swedish Research Council funded project, examining the preschool teacher's changing responsibilities on the basis of the 2010 policy revisions. The data in this part of the project was conducted through ethnographic fieldwork involving participant observation, field conversations, and interviews with preschool staff, heads, preschool teachers and child-care workers. The research was done at four preschools in four different Swedish municipalities. The choice of municipalities (local government officials and preschools) was based on the results a survey that was directed at local government officials. Altogether, 48 local government officials, employed at different municipal education departments, responded to questions about how the preschool teacher clarified responsibilities had been interpreted, organized and implemented. Four municipalities with different ways of interpreting, organizing and implementing preschool teacher clarified responsibilities were chosen for further investigation. The criteria for selection of preschools in each of the four municipalities was a) that they would have at least two departments, b) that the teams would consist of both preschool teachers and child-care workers and c) that the head of the preschool would have been working in the municipality during the implementation process. As researchers we observed four preschool team's daily work, including planning meetings, workplace meetings and other relevant meetings and took part of and analyzed the preschools policy documents.

Expected Outcomes

The findings show that different kinds of strategies have been used to meet the requirements expressed in the 2010 national policy discourse about the preschool teachers increased responsibility. Local governments have supported preschool teachers by offering different kinds of competence development in line with the demands in the national policy discourse. Heads often created a more hierarchical organization in which preschool teachers received an increased responsibility for planning, developing and accessing the educational activities and its quality. The new policy has also influenced the talk about responsibility. On a more general level both heads and the majority of preschool teachers and child-care workers talked about the preschool teacher as having responsibility. However, at the same time the results also show that the new policy has not influenced the performance of daily work to the same extent. The actual (re)distribution of tasks between preschool teachers and child-care workers, also turned out to be a sensitive issue. Though education reforms have been common in recent years in the Early Childhood Education area in many countries, our results will hopefully be of great relevance for researchers, local government officers, heads of preschools, preschool staff and policymakers both in Europe and other countries. Whether the ways to interpret, support, organize, talk about and implement the preschool teachers increased responsibility supports or prevents an increased professionalization will be elaborated further in the paper.

References

Bernstein, B. (1995). A Response. In A.R. Sadovnik (red.) (1995). Knowledge and pedagogy: the sociology of Basil Bernstein. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex publishing corporation. Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. Lanham, Md.: Rowman, & Littlefield Publishers. Bernstein, B. (2003). Class, codes and control. Vol 4:The structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. London and New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Brante, T. (2013). The Professional Landscape: The Historical development of Professions in Sweden. Professions & Professionalism 3(2), 1-18. http;//dx.doi.org/10.7577/pp.558 Englund, T. & Dyrdal Solbrekke, T. (2011). Professional resopnsibility under pressure? In C. Sugrue & T. Solbrekke Dyrdal (red.) (2011). Professional responsibility: new horizons of praxis. (1. ed.) Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge Freidson, E. (2001). Professionalism. The third logic. Cambridge: Polity Press. SFS 2010:800 (2010). Skollagen [National School Law]. Retrieved http://www.riksdagen.se Skolverket (2010). Curriculum for the Preschool, Lpfö 98: revised 2010. Retriwed from www.skolverket.se Solbrekke, T. D. & Englund, T. (2011). 'Bringing professional responsibility back in'. Studies in Higher Education, 36(7), p 1-15. DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2010.482205 Solbrekke, T. D. & Englund, T. (2014). Certification of Teachers: Tensions in a New Signature Reform. Professions and Professionalism, 4(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.7577/pp.668 Svensson, Lennart G. (2011). Profession, organisation, kollegialitet och ansvar. Socialvetenskaplig tidskrift (4), 301-319.

Author Information

Anita Eriksson (presenting / submitting)

University of Borås, Sweden

Dennis Beach (presenting)

University of Gothenburg

Ann-Katrin Svensson

Åbo Akademi, Finland

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