My Ph.D.-project is about understandings, doings and conditions for critical reflection in Norwegian kindergarten teacher education. The topic for my paper presentation is understandings of critical reflection in the kindergarten teacher educations curriculum

In the European bildung tradition, critical reflection has an emancipatory and enlightening interest with traces to critical theory at for instance Adorno and Freire, to Schöns reflective practitioner. Critical reflection has become a buzzword in education and education research that is thrown around haphazardly. Research has shown that reflection as a concept has become vague and imprecise (Beauchamp, 2015, Moxnes, 2016, Søndenå, 2004). It is staged as a catch all term for most mental/cognitive work done by (pre-service) kindergarten teachers by the Norwegian framework plan for kindergarten teacher education (Ministry of education and research (2012), and as my research suggests,also in the students’ curriculum.

A previous study has characterized the epistemology of Norwegian kindergarten teacher education as weak (Strand, 2009). Earlier studies show that Norwegian pre-service teachers are the ones who report that they put in the least effort in their studies, that the tasks of the Norwegian kindergarten teacher education is not sufficiently defined (Eik, 2014, Steinnes, 2014). By analyzing the curriculum, I hope to map understandings of reflection that students must orient in, but also assess the quality of how the curriculum understand reflection.

The research question for my paper is “How is critical reflection staged and understood in the curriculum for kindergarten teacher education?” I am working within a Lacanian framework, with a theory-driven analysis. From Lacan we know that from the mirror stage and onward (1977/2000) we internalize an ego-ideal that colonize our symbolic domain. The students’curriculum, will in a Lacanian framework, take up a symbolic position, and contribute to shape the students’ ego-ideal and bildung.
As we are talked into discourse, a social bond is formed (Lacan, 2007). Reflection happens within discourse, and therefore within a social bond. The university discourse, with knowledge addressing objet petit a, can be interpreted as a way for academic knowledge to appropriate excesses and lacks. The curriculum can be read as knowledge addressing the same lack of knowledge in the readers/learners, while keeping its master signifier hidden. The curriculum does not need to adhere to the academic discourse, it is the most probable one. 

One of the issues I work with is what Zizek (1999) and Dean (2008) theorize as a decline in symbolic efficiency in the neoliberal political thought that many European countries adopt. The decline in symbolic efficiency is understood as a disintegration of the Big Other that secures meaning. Without the symbolic, the imaginary and real converge as a labile, fragile space that is lost from transgression and law, but is instead caught up in drive and repetition. If critical reflection loses its symbolic efficiency, its function as an ideal for bildung/ego-ideal will be more at risk.

My study is a discursive document analysis (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2018; Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2011). In my study I have read the entire curriculum for two courses in the kindergarten teacher education at a Norwegian university college. The total data material includes about 1600 pages that consists mainly of textbooks, with a few journal articles. I have systematically read the curriculum searching for every instance of the words reflection and/or critical. I then copied each instance into a spreadsheet, and analyzed each statement through Lacans mirror stage theory. This is done by taking apart each statement/occurrence with regard to: “Who is the reflective agent?”, “What are they supposed to reflect about?”, “How are they supposed to reflect? (What kind of gaze)”, “What are they supposed to reflect in? (What is the mirrored surface)” and follow up on any given sources/references. An example reads as: “Reflect upon and discuss: How should the kindergarten teacher lead the cooperation with parents about common goals for child rearing? How can one solve situations where the kindergartens values from the values of the home? What does it take to find common core values?” (Tholin, 2015, p. 40, own translation). The reflective agent in this instance is the reader of the book (as a future kindergarten teacher). What they are supposed to reflect upon is parent cooperation and values in a hypothetical situation. How they are supposed to reflect is unclear, and what they are supposed to reflect in is unclear but the kindergartens values is a factor. I then look at the collected instances to map and identify the discourse.

As of now, the curriculum can be sorted into two: The main part of the curriculum that use and advocate reflection, some with their own questions directed at the reader for the reader to reflect upon (like the example above), and some textbooks and articles that don’t relate to reflection at all. Most of the textbooks that write about (critical) reflection seldom defines reflection or write how they understand reflection. Most often, I come across examples like this: “The leader [of the development efforts] has to have the role both as the driving force, but also as a dampener. The leader has to instigate and manage reflective and learning processes both individual and collective.” (Kvistad & Søbstad, 2005, p. 169, own translation), and the one cited earlier. It seems that many textbooks assume that the reader is supposed to know already what it means to reflect. Reflection is a term that many know of, but no one seem to know what is. My preliminary analysis point to reflection as a complex and multifaceted concept that diverges widely also within a single source. What reflection should do, how one should reflect, and what one should reflect in most often unstated which could support reflection as a catch-all term.

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