Superdiversity as a trajectory of diversity in Norwegian early childhood education and care: From a collection of differences to participation and becoming

The study investigates kindergarten teachers’ understanding of the concept of diversity, and how they think diversity is implemented in their own practice.  The author asks how diversity, as defined in kindergarten curricula, is understood and operationalised by kindergarten teachers.

Some of the informants perceived diversity as something that accompanied children with different cultural or ethnic backgrounds, and something that could lead to a change in educational practice. The migrant educators, as well as some teachers and student teachers, perceived diversity as a social context in which one lives. Diversity was also defined as unity, regardless of language skills or background. This led educators to facilitate diversity by creating situations in which both minority language and majority language children could also participate.

The data material consists of semi-structured individual interviews and group interviews with two migrant educators, ten kindergarten teachers and 15 student kindergarten teachers. The questions revolved around the employees’ work on diversity and their experiences of working with children who have minority and migrant backgrounds.

Sadownik, A. R. (2020). “Superdiversity as a trajectory of diversity in Norwegian early childhood education and care: From a collection of differences to participation and becoming”. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 21(4):284-296.