International developments in didactic research provide new approaches to understand the breadth and depth of teaching as a professional activity including its scientific base (Ligozat & Almqvist, 2018). Examples are didactic models and modelling (Sjöström, 2018; Wickman et al., 2018), comparative didactics across school subjects and the idea of a general subject didactics (Vollmer, 2021). Common are the efforts these approaches show to provide synthesis of didactic research as well as to contribute to the professional language shared between teachers and researchers. These overarching efforts are shared by the project reported in this study. The study is part of a national investment on practice-based research. In this two-year collaborative project between academia, preschool and school, the focus is on the teaching of science in a school area with a high degree of multiculturalism. The purpose of the project is to, in collaboration between preschool, school and university, develop subject didactic models, useful for teaching in preschool and in biology, physics and chemistry during the early years of primary school.

The project uses activity theory (Engeström, 1987, 2005, 2011) as an overall theoretical framework. Activity theory describes relations between different actors, actions and outcomes in developmental work processes. The theory shares a socio-cultural perspective and describes human activities shaped by historical and cultural contexts in terms of activity systems. The activity system shows actions that are made possible with the help of tools, rule systems and the division of labor included. An analysis based on activity systems, oscillates between using a longer historical time perspective on an entire system, and using a shorter time perspective on targeted actions of individual actors. Outcomes from this project are three subject specific didactic models; one focusing children’s interest with natural objects, one focusing work with multimodal and semiotic spaces for developing children’s’ language competences, and one focusing the use of mind maps and concept maps in the early years of school. They are understood as embedded in a meaningful context of activity for the participants. Moreover, the ambition to unite preschool - school within the same project gives rise to resistance in all three activities - preschool - school - teacher education. The project makes visible contradictions between activities, roles and difficulties in delimiting and defining natural science content, and actions initiated in relation to this by various actors.

Participants were a group of teachers from one preschool and the neighboring school, and a group of teacher educators and researchers. Data collection through documentation of the project group's meetings, through observations in the teaching practices, through interviews with children, pupils and student teachers. This was done using audio and video recording, photographs, and field and logbook notes of participating teachers, researchers and student teachers. During the first two years, the project group conducts three joint work meetings per semester. These meetings are documented through audio recording and are included in the study's data material. The data collection was done in relation to the problems, issues and challenges in relation to children's and pupils' knowledge, that were initiated and identified by the teachers. During the data collection themes about water, planets in space, soil and earthworms, and matter and air, were part of the teaching. The iterative work process included identifying questions, exploring these empirically, and developing theoretical models, that were triangulated in the project group, analysed and revised. Eventually this resulted in sub studies developing theoretically and empirically based subject didactic models. Subject didactic models were based in different theories, (i.e Dewey’s aesthetics, multimodal social semiotics, and socio-cultural link-making) and illustrated possible structures for how to approach the teaching and learning of the specific subject area or topic. The analytical focus here, is both on the didactic models themselves and how they contribute to childrens interest and learning, and on the project itself and how changes in practices and activities were enabled and hindered in the project.

In this project, didactic models are developed for the purposes of teaching and learning of science topics and areas, in pre-school and the early years of schooling. The project make available three subject didactic models which may be used as tools in teaching practice, for planning, conducting and evaluating teaching. The models are also useful in didactic comparison across subjects and enable theoretically based approaches to delimited topics. Moreover, in this project the ambition to unite preschool - school within the same project gives rise to resistance in all three activities - preschool - school - teacher education. The project makes visible contradictions between activities, roles and difficulties in delimiting and defining natural science content actions initiated in relation to this by various actors. By the tight connections between research, school- and preschool practice and teacher education, the project represents one way to strengthen the professional language and scientific base of teaching and learning practices in school and preschool, not only by the research results, but also by the approach to research collaboration. The study contributes knowledge and understanding about conditions for teaching science in multilingual preschools and to discussions about how teaching science in preschools can be strengthened and developed.

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