Tillidsarbejde og tydelighed: et studie af tillid, magt og afhængighed blandt pædagoger og forældre i danske vuggestuer

The study investigates relationships and interactions between parents and staff at Danish toddler departments. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among kindergarten teachers and families in two primary and two supplementary Danish toddler departments, as well as a historical account and analysis of the toddler department’s emergence and development of ideals regarding forms of cultural interactions, logics and reasons for the everyday relationship between parents and kindergarten teachers are analysed. The study investigates how these logics and reasons can be explained; as well as their importance for the interactions between parents and kindergarten teachers in today’s Danish toddler departments.

Efforts to build a relationship of trust between parents and kindergarten teachers are described as a continuous dance in which the relationship between the parties is negotiated and reflects the asymmetry that arises because the kindergarten teacher often stands in a position of power over the parents. Both body language and verbal dialogues influence the work of trust, either in a positive or negative sense. Breaches of trust appear to be very difficult to repair. Parents who attempt to repair the facade when their children have created cracks in it, parents who can laugh and joke together with the kindergarten staff, and parents who involve themselves in everyday kindergarten life, but neither too much nor too little, are described by the kindergarten teachers as trustworthy or ‘civilised’. Kindergarten teachers’ perception of parents as either trustworthy and ‘civilised’ or untrustworthy and ‘uncivilised’ is therefore not linked to the parents’ socioeconomic status, but rather to the parents’ boundary setting, whether or not the homes are perceived as chaotic, whether or not parents demand special treatment for their children, as such factors, in the eyes of the kindergarten teacher, show whether the parents recognise the role, work and authority of the kindergarten.

The study has collected data from three toddler departments from one area in Denmark, with 10-15 children, 2-3 educators and one assistant in each department. The area was multiethnic, which was reflected in the toddler department. This area was compared to another area in the same city. In the other area, approximately 10% of the children were of an ethnic origin other than Danish. Here, three toddler departments were included in the study, each with 14-16 children and with two kindergarten teachers and two assistants.

Høyrup, A. R. (2018). "Tillidsarbejde og tydelighed: et studie af tillid, magt og afhængighed blandt pædagoger og forældre i danske vuggestuer". Akademisk avhandling. Aarhus Universitet.