Internationally, policy reforms affect Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and reshape preschool teachers´ work leading to increased professionalization (Armstrong, 2024; Wingrave & McMahon, 2016). Research shows that such reforms often expand and intensify teachers´ responsibilities. Kangas and Harju-Luukkainen (2021) demonstrated that policy reforms in Finland have affected teachers´ work giving them multiple different roles and thus requiring them to do “more of everything” (p.71). In Sweden, policy reforms have challenged the holistic approach of an integration of care and education, to an increased focus on teaching and professionalisation (Jönsson et al, 2012; Wahlgren & Andersson, 2024). Since preschool became the first step in the Swedish education system in 1996 and was regulated by the Education Act (SFS 2010:800), a shift towards more education than care emerged, affecting preschool teachers work and profession (Alexiadou et al., 2024; Lundström, 2015; Still et al., 2021). With the Education Act (SFS 2010:800) in 2011, preschool was fully incorporated in the Swedish school system and resulted in new concepts, enfolding a teaching assignment for preschool teachers, where only teachers with a teaching certificate are authorised to teach in preschool. The reform was debated and the term teaching, traditionally not used to define the work of preschool teachers, raised resistance due to its strong connotation to direct instruction and school education (Vallberg Roth, 2020). 

The Swedish national curriculum for preschool education has been revised five times since introduced 1998 with both minor and major revisions leading up the latest version in 2025 (Ministry of Education and Research). This study concerns policy reforms and the shift towards education and teaching in the Swedish ECEC thus gain knowledge about how policy change has contributed to reconstruct preschool teachers´ teaching assignment. 

Aim and research questions

The aim of the study is to examine how Swedish national ECEC policy documents from 1987 – 2025 have been reformed in relation to the teaching assignment. The study addresses the following questions:

• How has the concept of teaching been conceptualized in Swedish national ECEC policy documents?

• What implications do these conceptualizations have on the preschool teacher profession?

Theoretical framework

In education systems, teaching is conceptualized and reconstructed in various contexts. The study takes a theoretical point of departure in the social constructionist assumption that people's perceptions of the world are constructed between people in dialogue and in relation to their specific social, historical and cultural context. Furthermore, it is assumed that social constructions and actions go together, which means that people act based on their understandings of the world (Burr, 2015; Gergen, 1985; Linell, 2009).

According to Linell (2009) social construction takes place in and through language in different contexts. Social constructions are thus in continuous reconstruction in relation to the social, historical and cultural context. This study directs its attention to the policy context of preschools.  The introduction of the concept of teaching in the Swedish national ECEC policy documents is a reform that entailed recontextualization. Recontextualization means that when something, here the concept of teaching, changes context it also changes meaning. Recontextualization thus includes a reconstruction of the concept of teaching in relation to preschools’ social, historical, and cultural context (Linell, 1998, 2009). Recontextualization and reconstruction of the concept of teaching implies a change of practice as changed conceptualizations leads to new interpretations and actions. In order to study this process, contextual social constructionism (Linell, 2009) is used to examine Swedish national ECEC policy documents, thus develop deeper understandings of preschool teachers´ teaching assignments.

This study employs a qualitative approach through text analysis, examining Swedish national ECEC policy documents from 1987 to 2025. The period was limited to 1987–2025 because it is during this period that an increased focus on learning and teaching emerges in the Swedish ECEC (Alexiadou et al., 2024; Vallberg Roth, 2006). The empirical material in this study thus consists of national ECEC policy documents. The data selection has been carried out through searches on websites (The Swedish Government; The Swedish Parliament; the Ministry of Education and Research). Delimitations have been made based on relevance to the research questions and resulted in the following sampling: Pedagogical programme for preschool; four versions of Ordinance on the curriculum for preschool (SKOLFS 1998:16, SKOLFS 2011:69, SKOLFS 2018:50, SKOLFS 2025:354) Qualitative content analysis (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004; Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) was used to analyse and interpret the data. In a summative content analysis, (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) the analytic focus is directed towards keywords in the texts rather than analysing the material as a whole. Keywords can derive both from the purpose of the study and previous research. Initially, words and concepts related to a specific content are identified and quantified before interpreting their contextual meaning. The summative analysis of each document was conducted following; the texts were initially read several times identifying keywords deriving both from the documents and previous research (Henriksson, 2022; Ohlsson et al., 2022). Additionally, a digital search of the keywords was conducted using the search function. Further, keywords were coded and counted. In the next step, explicit and implicit statements of teaching were identified, and notes were written to gain understanding of the content and meaning. The coded statements, regarded as units of meaning (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004), were then analysed and categories were developed. The next analytic step involved developing themes. Then categories and themes from each document were compared with the aim to identify reconstruction of the concept of teaching and the teaching assignment.

Emerging findings indicate that even if the term teaching was not explicitly used in the analyzed national ECEC policy documents before 2018, the same terminology (i.e. stimulate, challenge, promote, support) was used in all documents. Prominent differences regarding the conceptualizations appear to lie in its sematic and contextual framing. As an example, ‘support’, ‘promote’ and ‘stimulate’ were emphasised in the Pedagogical programme for preschool and SKOLFS 1998:16. In 2011 the emphasis was on ‘stimulate’ and ‘challenge’ (SKOLFS 2011:69). From 2018 the terms ‘challenge’ and ‘stimulate’ were emphasised (SKOLFS 2018:50, SKOLFS 2025:354). This changes thus reconstruct the concept of teaching as social construction takes place in and through language (Linell, 2009). In the Pedagogical programme there were explicit descriptions and examples regarding the teaching assignments. The emerging findings indicate an emphasis on ‘plan’, ‘develop’ and ‘evaluate’ pedagogical methods and ‘arrange and lead’ learning activities. In SKOLFS 1998:16 the explicit descriptions and examples regarding the teaching assignment were removed. The teaching assignment emerges as a promotion to create conditions for learning by supporting and guiding children’s learning. In the following revisions, more explicit assignments are formulated, for example, ‘documentation’, ‘evaluation’, ‘teaching’, ‘choosing methods and tools’. This reconstruction of the teaching assignment implicates changes to preschool teachers´ profession since social constructions and actions go together and thus affects preschool teachers’ pedagogical work (Burr, 2015; Gergen, 1985; Linell, 2009). The emerging findings indicates two major shifts. Changing the conceptualisation of teaching implicates changes to preschool teachers´ roles, from a leading role to a guiding role. Further, a more active teacher role emerges in the shift from supporting and guiding to stimulate and challenging learning. With each revision of the Ordinance on the curriculum for preschool additional explicit tasks were formulated, thereby increasing preschool teachers’ assignments and responsibility.

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