It is well known that communication with young children improve their reading and writing skills later in life. Reading books to children is an established routine in early childhood education. Other routines are using the circle time for communication about daily activities. In Sweden language support is highly emphasized very much due to different international testing results, such as PISA, PEARLS and others.  A quick glance at the website by the Swedish National School Research Institute shows that all systematic research overviews are often directed towards students learning, e.g. focused on student’s learning to read in early years or on how to support children with another mother tongue e.g. language development and social inclusion (Skolforskningsinstitutet, n.y). In other words, very much is said on what to do, but seldom how to do it. This paper focuses on how through professional learning meetings, as part of a model of action research, early childhood teachers developed deeper understandings about their communication support with children in every-day ‘classroom’ situations. The theory of practice architectures (TPA) is used as a theoretical resource to understand the nature and conditions of promise and possibility that action research provides for learners and leaders of professional learning (Kemmis et al., 2014; Rönnerman et al., 2015).

In this study, communication patterns were studied by using a proven observation tool based on language research and developed by (Dockrell et al., 2015). We took this protocol a step further by combining it with action research with a focus on everyday practices that gave the early childhood teachers’ possibilities to discuss and reflect on what happens in communication with the children. This, in turn, made it possible to find ways to understand and change their communication practices at the site. The model developed is called ELSA (Early Language Support Activities) (Rönnerman & Nordberg, 2022) and was used in two preschools (children 1-5 years old). In short, the model consists of four main phases: i) the early childhood teachers choose a routine situation (here the circle time) and videotaped it; ii) the team watched the video and registered observations in the observation tool, consisting of three dimensions physical, didactic, and social, iii) the team decided on an area to improve that would be followed by actions, data gathering and reflections together with a facilitator/researcher, iv) after six to eight weeks the phases were repeated from i). All conversations with the facilitator were conducted and recorded via zoom (due to the pandemic).

As an analytic framework, TPA showed that the early childhood teachers changed the practice of the circle time in response to the site and where children gathered in smaller groups. In the group teachers used alternative ways of telling a story, for example, by using felt figures as characters on a board to dramatize the story instead of always reading it. Later, in one setting, teachers noticed that children began to mimic the practice, for instance, one child would gather a group of children around her and retold the story by using the same felt figures. Conclusions for the teachers professional learning show three findings concerning the physical, didactic, and social dimensions. First, that the changed physical set ups of the small group circle time formed new material-economic arrangements that influenced the interactional possibilities and communicative development for the children; that at the level of the didactic, the language and discourses about children’s communication practices used by the teachers changed in both the professional and classroom practices; and that the social-political arrangements employed by action research through learning together as a teaching team shifted the power balances. In conclusion, through changed practice architectures participants developed increased awareness of themselves as educators, learned, that the communicative development among the children can be supported and developed by circle time, and the interaction and communication practices between the teacher team were enhanced through the realization of the importance of a structure in developing their communication patterns.

Dockrell, J.E., Bakopoulou, J., Law, J., Spencer, S., & Lindsay, G., (2015). Capturing communication supporting classrooms: The development of a tool and feasibility study. Child Language Teaching and Therapy 31(3),271-286. doi: 0.1177/0265659015572165 Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P. & Bristol, L. (2014) Changing Practices, Changing Education. Springer. Rönnerman, K. (2022). Aktionsforskning: Vad? Hur? Varför? [Action Research What? How? Why?] Studentlitteratur. Rönnerman, K. & Nordberg, A. (2022). Språkstöd i förskolan genom aktionsforskning. ELSA-modellen i praktiken. (Language support through action research. Practicing the ELSA-model]. Lärarförlaget. Rönnerman, K., Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2017). The practice architectures of middle leading in early childhood education. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy 11(8), 2-20. doi.org/10.1186/s40723-017-0032-z Skolforskningsinstitutet (ny). https://www.skolfi.se/