Iscensättning av undervisning: Målrelationellt lärande i förskolan

The aim of the study is to contribute knowledge about how teaching (goal-oriented processes under the leadership of a kindergarten teacher) in kindergarten can be understood. Focusing on the concepts of staging as well as goal-relational versus goal-rational learning processes, parts of a kindergarten teaching project that focuses on children’s play and exploration are analysed. 

The authors argue that a goal-relational approach to teaching in kindergartens produces the best results in terms of meeting Swedish curriculum goals. In a goal-relational teaching method, the children’s questions, interests, wishes, curiosity and creativity are the starting points for the learning processes. This involves children, educators, the environment, materials, concepts and curriculum goals interacting with each other and being in dynamic relation to each other. In this way, the authors believe that children receive a foundation on which a lifelong desire to learn and creative knowledge can be built. 

The data material consists of documentation from project work in a Swedish kindergarten where the educators had worked for several years using the Reggio Emilia educational approach. This pedagogy emphasises that children are endowed with ‘a hundred languages’ and that children should be an active part of learning processes. Over the course of six months, the researchers followed a teaching project on the topic of play and play worlds at a kindergarten toddler department. They analysed the staff’s pedagogical documentation of the project, which consisted of notes, video recordings and photographs collected in a digital document. In addition, three conversational interviews were conducted with three of the kindergarten teachers involved in the project. 

Nilsson, M., Lecusay, R., Alnervik, K. & Ferholt, B. (2018). “Iscensättning av undervisning: Målrelationellt lärande i förskolan». Barn, 36(3-4):109-126.