Purpose
The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how young children participate in communities with one another in everyday activities in day nursery, and how the children's co-creation is related to professionals' endeavours to include and identify children with special needs.
Result
Overall, the study shows that young children's communities in the day nursery are mutually conditional on the day nursery teachers' possibilities to explore everyday life with the children. Moreover, the analyses suggest that the children's co-creation in the day nursery is complicated by the fact that the day nursery teachers also have to evaluate and document the children's participation and competence development. The author concludes that holding the teachers accountable for identifying and assessing children whose behaviour causes concern limits the flexibility of pedagogical everyday practice and restricts the teachers' possibilities to involve the children's perspectives.
The author finds that the teachers' endeavours to include all children and at the same time identify children with special needs creates a number of dilemmas for the teachers. Several of the teachers voice that, in situations where evaluation becomes the central aspect, it is difficult to explore everyday activities with the children and thereby include the children's input in joint activities. The way in which the children's everyday life and learning activities are organised by the adults thereby becomes important for the children's co-creation, and for how the children can pursue their own interests, influence what is going on, and learn from it. This means that the children's influence on everyday activities and their possibilities to explore the surrounding world together are limited. An example of this is when the adults try to set up a learning activity in the form of a treasure hunt, in which the children are to find colours and shapes on the playground, and instead the children are busy jumping in a large puddle of water. The adults are occupied by an agenda which in a way is detached from the children's own exploration and interests. According to the author, this illustrates how an exclusive focus on carrying out a learning activity that can be documented makes it difficult for the adults to see how the children themselves create a learning situation and how the children's co-creation is related to the pedagogical activities in the day nursery.
The analyses also indicate that the teachers are alone in the identification and assessment task, and that several teachers express a wish for more sparring and help, especially from psychologists from the municipal pedagogical-psychological advice unit to make the assessment task more of a joint process through cross-disciplinary cooperation.
Design
The empirical foundation of the dissertation consists of ten months of field work in two day nursery groups of children aged 1-2 years. The day nurseries were selected because they were considered resourceful, and because several of the employees had participated in development projects or in continuing and further education on, for example, inclusion in day care. Through participant observations, the author explored the children's participation and co-creation in the pedagogical activities and routines "circle time", "life on the playground" and "gaps" as well as the pedagogical work on inclusion and identification. The data material consists of field notes, situated conversations with day nursery staff, and semi-structured interviews with two selected nursery teachers, a psychologist from the municipal pedagogical-psychological advice unit and the team manager of a resource team. In addition, the author observed cross-disciplinary meetings, staff meetings and nursery teacher meetings. Moreover, the author included various documents such as annual plans, minutes and municipal cooperation procedures.
References
Munck, C. C. C. (2017). Små børns fællesskabelse i en flertydig vuggestuepraksis. Ph.d.-afhandling. Roskilde: Roskilde Universitet.