Se lyset sammen er bra! Hvordan kan ett etter- og videreutdanningsprogram bidra til at førskolelærere bedre ser, hører og forstå børn?

The objective of this study is to investigate how continuing and further education and training can help child carers and childcare assistants become better at seeing, hearing and understanding children. Questions dealt with the effect of continuing and further education and training on child carers’ practice.  The study reported how a private daycare centre had developed its own ‘tailor-made’ continuing and further education and training course for the whole personnel group; a total of 30 people. Child carers attended a continuing training course qualifying for 30 ECTS points. In parallel with the course, the personnel group took part in a partnership with researchers from Vestfold University College, who wanted more systematic knowledge about the importance of continuing and further education and training for pedagogical work at a daycare centre. 

The study shows that, after having completed a further education course, child carers seek contact with children and prioritise such contact, rather than doing more practically oriented work.  The quality of the contact has changed. The study shows that the children are more central on the agenda when personnel hold meetings, and planning of pedagogical activities is based on shared experience with the children, rather than on the personnel’s own ideas. In addition, the child carers have gained strong competences in relation to managing development work and in relation to managing department staff.
The continuing and further education and training programme focuses on child participation, quality, documentation and evaluation, as well as on daycare centres as a learning organisation. The programme is composed of meetings, guidance, assignments and development work. The combination of learning arenas is an important tool that makes it possible to mediate learning. The study concludes that continuing and further education and training for all of a personnel group is a good investment for a daycare centre, and that the success criterion is that the course is linked to specialist collaboration between the daycare centre and the professional/research community.

The questionnaire was distributed to all the personnel (30 people), both during a course and after, in order to assess the quality of the given course. Focus group interviews took place after most of the analysis work had been completed. Child carers and representatives from the administration took part in these interviews.

Jansen, T. T.; Tholin, K. R. (2006). Se lyset sammen er bra! Hvordan kan ett etter- og videreutdanningsprogram bidra til at førskolelærere bedre ser, hører og forstå børn? Tønsberg: Høgskolen i Vestfold.