Session Information
99 ERC SES 05 F, Ethnography
Paper Session
Contribution
In recent decades, preschools as well as schools and other higher education have been increasingly influenced by international contexts with migration flows, global political actors, and multinational companies. What this has come to mean from a cultural, historical, and educational science perspective is what we study within the interdisciplinary doctoral school Education, Learning and Globalisation, in which I am included within the framework of my doctoral position in ethnology at Södertörn University. The doctoral school has among other focus areas, one of which is intercultural and norm-critical perspectives on preschool, school, and teacher education. It is this area my study connects to by using theoretical inspiration from the political discourse theory (PDT) to seek knowledge of how norms and value conflicts in the wake of migration and global political discourses affect the interpretation and implementation of the Swedish preschool's social mission.
The purpose of the thesis is to empirically examine how the construction of the subject position of a preschool teacher takes place in preschool teacher education in relation to the norm and value conflicts, contradictions, and dissonances that may arise while practicing this position. What drives people to work in preschools and what are their initial conceptions of the preschool teacher role and the preschool mission when entering the education? How does the understanding of the social mission of future preschool teachers change during the course of the education and what are the discourses that create this change? What ambiguities and dissonances emerge between different values and norms within the preschool assignment, and what consequences does this have for future preschool teachers during their internship periods? What intercultural tensions and conflicts of norms and values arise in the encounter between divergent discourses and perceptions of the preschool mission in everyday preschool life, and how are these experienced and handled by future preschool teachers during their internship periods?
I intend to use political discourse theory as my theoretical approach, especially as developed by Chantal Mouffe (2008). Pre-school education is to a considerable extent about the fosterage of democracy, and there is a long tradition of assigning children the role of ‘political utopia bearers’; not infrequently, children are regarded as ‘promises of a better future’ (Dolk 2013:114; Hörnfeldt 2009:14). Nevertheless, preschool teacher students often have problems answering exam questions about how the preschool mission is political. In her book On the Political (Mouffe 2008), Mouffe worries about democracy in relation to our inability to think politically. The reason for this inability is our delusion that there is such a thing as consensus, based on 'common sense' and universal consensus solutions. Is the preschool mission and its values an example of such a delusion? Mouffe completely dismisses the idea that it would be possible to ever reach a complete consensus, as the notion of such is a chimera: consensus is always based on exclusionary practices. Consensus is nothing but ‘the result of a hegemonic articulation’ (Laclau och Mouffe 2001:xviii). According to Mouffe, there are always groups and individuals who do not feel included in such supposedly universal consensual solutions (Mouffe 2008).
Method
This is an ethnographic, qualitative study. My main category of material consists of semi-structured in-depth interviews, with 21 preschool teacher students, conducted in the spring/autumn of 2023. The interviews form the basis for analyses of how different discourses shape the preschool teacher students' view of their future role and societal mission. The interviews have been recorded with audio recording technology and/or via Zoom (with or without image) and then transcribed. I have also conducted observations where I followed the interviewed preschool teacher students during certain educational elements. This includes their internship periods at the preschools. Thirteen such observations at five different preschools have been carried out. Other observations concern the introductory and reflection seminars given by the higher education institutions, where the students are assigned the tasks they will carry out during the internship. The seminars also allow the students to process their internship experiences and discuss both expectations and concerns with each other as well as with their teachers. Seventeen seminars in three different institutions were observed. A further interesting but somewhat sensitive observation has been the ‘tripartite dialogue’ between the student, the examining teacher, and the supervisor assigned to the student. During such a tripartite, the teacher and supervisor observe the student during a pedagogical activity at the preschool, after which they evaluate the student’s achievement together. I managed to take part in two such evaluations. By supplementing the in-depth interviews with observations, I wanted to gain insight into discrepancies between ideals and practice, since when ‘generally accepted visions are put into practice’ they sometimes get ‘consequences that are not always in line with the ideals’ (Runfors 2003:38, my translation). This relates to the political discourse theory's view of discourses as being not only what is expressed in text or speech, but also what is articulated in everyday practice (Laclau och Howarth 2015:25). Other material categories consist of various forms of reflection material that preschool teacher students are asked to produce throughout their education. Hereby they record what they see as significant, upsetting, or difficult to understand in the course literature or during the lectures and seminars, and not least during their periods of practical training. The material described above will be contextualised using material from media archives, course literature, specialist journals, and various steering documents such as the Education Act, curricula, equal treatment plans, policies, etc. Methodologically, this implies text and discourse analyses.
Expected Outcomes
‘The preschool shall actively and consciously influence and stimulate children to gradually embrace the common values of our society’, says the Swedish preschool curriculum (Skolverket 2018:12). Previous research, however, has shown that there seems to be an overconfidence that these values are necessarily perceived as common and unproblematic in a society characterised by increasing diversification (Dolk 2013; Hill 2021; Zackariasson 2015). The feasibility of the assignment is further complicated by the fact that there is a contradictory ‘dissonance’ between some of these values and norms (León Rosales 2010:58ff). At the time of this application, I had barely begun any analytical work, but so far, my material has to a low extent revealed the dissonance promised by previous research. This might be due to my involuntary selection. The students, preschools, and parents who have given their consent to participate in the study are probably not the ones with the major problems. Still, there are problems, I hear them mentioned - but I cannot say that they are prominent in my material. Instead, the Swedish preschool appears as a ‘better version of reality’ as one student put it. When reading the curriculum, the Education Act, and the course literature; when visiting preschools, and listening to teachers and students, it sometimes seems hard not to be blinded by an image of The Preschool as a politically correct micro-society, exclusively inhabited by democratic and open-minded citizens, of whom all are being listened to, equal and self-actualised, as well as safe, happy and sugar-free. The preschool is a place with zero tolerance for violence; where everyone's individual interests are safeguarded; and where there is every opportunity for constant learning, as well as becoming one's potential ‘best self’. A world where you want to be - even as an adult. A quasi-world to fall in love with.
References
Dolk, Klara. 2013. Bångstyriga barn: makt, normer och delaktighet i förskolan. Stockholm: Ordfront. Hill, Helena. 2021. ”Normkritisk vaccination. Normkritik och normkritisk pedagogik i Skolverkets rapporter och råd 2009 – 2014”. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, Vol. 26 (2–3):38–60. Hörnfeldt, Helena. 2009. Prima barn, helt u.a. : normalisering och utvecklingstänkande i svensk barnhälsovård 1923-2007. Göteborg: Makadam. Laclau, Ernesto, och David R. Howarth. 2015. Ernesto Laclau : post-marxism, populism, and critique. London ; Routledge. Laclau, Ernesto, och Chantal Mouffe. 2001. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso. León Rosales, René. 2010. Vid framtidens hitersta gräns: om maskulina elevpositioner i en multietnisk skola. Stockholm ; Botkyrka: Mångkulturellt centrum, Elanders. Mouffe, Chantal. 2008. Om det politiska. Hägersten: Tankekraft. Runfors, Ann. 2003. Mångfald, motsägelser och marginaliseringar: en studie av hur invandrarskap formas i skolan. Stockholm: Prisma. Skolverket. 2018. Läroplan för förskolan. Lpfö 18. Zackariasson, Maria. 2015. ”Caught between expectations: Swedish student teachers’ experiences of working with gender and sexuality issues”. Nordic studies in education (3–04):217–32.
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