Signing in: Knowledge and action in nursery teaching

The purpose of the study is to investigate how the kindergarten teacher’s knowledge in teaching at a toddler department is closely linked to everyday kindergarten life; the other employees, the children, and the material things and routines that surround them. The researcher does not only see knowledge as an attribute related to the individual kindergarten teacher, or as a personal characteristic of the kindergarten teacher related to experiences and emotions, but investigates knowledge and action as an intertwined phenomenon. The aim of the study is to investigate how educational knowledge at the toddler department is a collective endeavour involving kindergarten teachers, children, schedules, nappies, meals, and so on.

According to the researcher, the results show that the kindergarten teachers’ knowledge is not individual, but related to the human and non-human environment of the kindergarten department. Knowledge is based on the ability to notice different signs and relationships that arise in the kindergarten context, and act on them.  The researcher claims that knowledge in kindergartens is created in one network of relationships, and that the authority’s attempts to professionalise the kindergarten sector by exporting external knowledge into the practice, with the use of standards and evidence-based practice, are not productive.

The empirical data is based on an ethnographic investigation in which the researcher studied what happened in two Danish toddler departments after she had two kindergarten teachers at each department change workplaces with each other for two weeks. Firstly, the researcher observed and interviewed the kindergarten teachers while they were working in their familiar surroundings, before observing and interviewing them when they were in another kindergarten with new and unfamiliar surroundings. The two kindergartens were selected because they had a similar structure and profile, and because it was easy for the kindergarten teachers to get to their temporary new workplaces.

Plum, M. (2018). “Signing in: Knowledge and action in nursery teaching”. Ethnography and Education, 13(2):204-217.