Att synliggöra det förväntade - förskolans dokumentation i en performativ kultur

Author
Lindberg, R.
Source
Linnéuniversitetet
Year
2018

Purpose

The study investigates the type of values that are conveyed in the documentation that kindergartens themselves produce and further convey to children, parents and visitors to kindergartens. The researcher investigates what this documentation highlights as valuable actions. The three research questions are: 1) What type of actions appear to be valuable in the kindergarten’s performative documentation practice? 2) How are these valuable actions connected to the children and staff in the documentation practice? 3) What is made visible as being valuable in kindergarten activities?

Result

The results show that the majority of documentation involved actions related to learning and knowledge. Documentation concerning ethical actions, participation and contribution played a less prominent role. The focus on learning and knowledge often involved different curriculum topics, such as language, mathematics and science. Most of the documentation was goal- and result-oriented. The children were not compared with each other, but rather the documentation compared the progression of individual children. The children were visible in the documentation practice, while the kindergarten staff were relatively invisible. Overall, the documentation focused on children’s knowledge and skills. This was done both implicitly, by highlighting specific actions, and explicitly, through documentation that tested the children’s knowledge. The researcher claims that the strong focus on knowledge and learning is an indication that the documentation practice in kindergartens is performative.

Design

The researcher collected documentation from three kindergartens in three Swedish municipalities, all of which were part of the Small Children’s Learning development project. The sample criteria were that the kindergartens conducted continuous documentation work and that they represented communities with different population structures. The data material consisted of documentation produced by kindergarten teachers that was publicly available in the kindergarten, either in the form of text and images hanging on the walls, or documentation that was placed in the children's individual folders. A total of 441 documentations of varying scope were collected and analysed.

References

Lindberg, R. (2018). «Att synliggöra det förväntade - förskolans dokumentation i en performativ kultur». Akademisk avhandling. Linnéuniversitetet.