Purpose
The purpose of the study is to identify and analyse kindergarten staff's statements about children who in various ways are categorised/constructed as children in need of special support, where the context is an already pressured work situation for the employees. The research questions are: 1. What expressions about children, who are categorised as children in need of special support, become prominent in the discourse about the pressured situation? 2. How are children presented and positioned as subjects in the category of need for special support within the discourse about the pressured situation? 3. How are kindergarten staff portrayed and positioned as subjects in relation to constructions of children in need of special support?
Result
The analysis shows that expressions associated with children in need of special support as a discursive category recur. The image of mainly two categories of children in need of special support becomes prominent in a more frequent manner: children who require (more) resources and children who need to be closely monitored. The children are positioned, with the effect that they become resource-intensive, time thieves, risk creators, energy consumers and killjoys. The kindergarten staff, on the other hand, become the empathetic, the inadequate, the stressed, the exhausted, the sad and the sick.
Design
The study is based on 1600 stories published on the Förskoleopprøret website www.forskoleeupproret.weebly.com. Qualitative, thematic content analysis was used with theoretical support from Butler and Foucault.
References
Palla, L. (2021). “När barn blir till belastning och problem i förskola: Om behov av särskilt stöd och resurser i ett pressat läge”. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 26(4):7-29.