From activity to transdisciplinarity and back again – preschool teachers’ reasoning about pedagogical goals

Author
Björklund, C. & Ahlskog-Björkman, E.
Source
International Journal of Early Years Education, 26(1):90-103.
Year
2018

Purpose

This study presents an analysis of pre-school teachers’ explanations of different pedagogical objectives. How teachers in a Swedish and a Finnish context describe the children’s learning objectives and how they describe the implementation of these objectives in practice are of specific interest. The research question is: How are pedagogical objectives perceived and executed in thematically oriented and play-based pedagogical practice in pre-school?

Result

Out of the six pre-school teachers, three stated that learning objectives guided their pedagogical work. The researchers used variation theory in their analysis of the interviews, which helped them identify both direct and indirect learning objectives. A deeper analysis of these objectives provided a comprehensive overview of intertwined pedagogical objectives that moved between activity objectives, work objectives and interdisciplinary objectives.

Design

This study is based on in-depth interviews with active pre-school teachers. The researchers used qualitative analyses to describe how the teachers perceive pedagogical objectives and how the objectives are implemented in pedagogical activities.

The sample consists of 6 pre-school teachers. All the interviews were conducted during the spring of 2014 at the pre-school teachers’ workplaces. The interviews were semi-structured and had a duration of 75-130 minutes.

References

Björklund, C. & Ahlskog-Björkman, E. (2018). «From activity to transdisciplinarity and back again – preschool teachers’ reasoning about pedagogical goals». International Journal of Early Years Education, 26(1):90-103.

Financed by

Not specified