Förskolans dokumentations- och bedömningspraktik. En diskursanalys av förskollärares gemensamma tal om dokumentation och bedömning

The purpose of the study is to provide knowledge about documentation work and assessment practices in kindergartens. Focus is placed on kindergarten teachers’ conversations about documentation and assessment, and how discourses on documentation work and assessment practices are maintained, challenged or recreated.

The results show that kindergarten teachers talk about documentation as something that is regulated with the curriculum as the authority. In addition, they see the documentation work as something that seems beneficial to kindergartens and employees’ reputation, the children’s development and the development of kindergartens. Documentation is also referred to as a tool for working with children’s interests and influence. All of these speech acts legitimise the documentation work in kindergarten.

In contrast to this, there are a few speech acts that question kindergarten documentation practices. The question of whether kindergartens function as a ‘Big Brother’ world is asked. Photography and film emerge as particularly important documentation tools with good consequences for children’s development, making the organisation visible to caregivers and placing focus on learning. The children’s participation in the documentation work is justified by the kindergarten teachers in several ways despite the fact that the children have few opportunities to oppose the documentation.

The kindergarten teachers demonstrate both the necessity and desirability of the concept of assessment in the kindergarten’s documentation and assessment work. The conversations show high semantic modality when kindergarten teachers express reluctance to assess individual children, but at the same time admit that this is something they must do. They legitimise this through claims that the assessment is in the best interests of the children. Assessment of the relationship between activities and the children’s actions emerges as desirable through the conversations.     

In the analysis of how kindergarten teachers talk about documentation and assessment, the author has identified five different ways of referring to these processes. This applies to discourses on power structures, learning, professionalisation, digitalisation and welfare. 

The methodology of the study is based on Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. The study’s starting point is the way kindergarten teachers express what they see as common sense in terms of documentation and assessment through their speech acts. The data was collected through two focus groups involving a total of ten kindergarten teachers. The kindergarten teachers’ speech acts were analysed using the analytical concepts of modality and legitimacy.

Virtanen, M. (2018). “Förskolans dokumentations- och bedömningspraktik. En diskursanalys av förskollärares gemensamma tal om dokumentation och bedömning». Akademisk avhandling. Linnéuniversitetet.