Pædagogisk faglighed: Udforskning af demokratiske perspektiver på forandringsarbejde i daginstitutioner

The article presents and discusses various change ambitions that are at stake in and around change-oriented research in the pedagogical field. Based on a critical-utopian action research project in which kindergarten employees investigate and develop a pedagogical piece of work involving well-being, the author discusses what these change ambitions can mean in practice.

The author criticises the dominant way of thinking about change that results in authoritarian and technical perspectives that define the political and normative dimensions of pedagogy. To compensate for this, the author argues that it is important to work with democratisation as a key ambition for change. The article shows that this is important for the understanding of both pedagogical work and the results of the change processes.

The author describes the study as a critical-utopian action research project. The research project was based on the kindergarten employees’ work that involved children’s well-being. Focus was placed on the knowledge and experiences that kindergarten employees have in their work involving well-being, as well as their perspectives (in the form of criticism and wishes) on the work involving well-being and the frameworks within which the work is carried out. In this way, the project was an attempt to develop criteria, in collaboration between researchers and practitioners, regarding what good well-being work can look like based on the kindergarten employees’ knowledge. 

Three kindergartens from three Danish municipalities participated in the project. These were integrative institutions, with children from approximately 6 months old to approximately 6 years old. The institutions were of very different sizes (from a small local kindergarten to a large kindergarten where several smaller kindergartens had merged together). They had different socioeconomic recruitment bases and they were distributed across rural and urban areas. All the employees from the three institutions, i.e. educators, pedagogical staff, assistants and kitchen staff, participated in the study. In total, just under 50 kindergarten employees participated in the project.

Thingstrup, S. V. (2018). “Pædagogisk faglighed: Udforskning af demokratiske perspektiver på forandringsarbejde i daginstitutioner”. Forskning og Forandring,1(1):9–29.