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Master i barnehagepedagogikk I have interviewed day care centre managers about their views of staff quality. My aim is to investigate how managers perceive the impact staff has on the quality of work with children and parents in day care centres. I have conducted focus group interviews with day care centre managers in two municipalities. I use the concept ‘staff quality’ in order to delimit my study and focus on how managers think of staff quality in different dimensions of day care. I have been inspired by Hans-Georg Gadamer in terms of dialogue, the to and fro movement of questions, and the hermeneutical circle of conditions for understanding. This means that I have used my own knowledge and experience as well. My research questions are: - How do day care centre managers understand the term staff quality in day care centre? - How do day care centre managers organize, control, and manage staff quality in their daily work? - What are the hinders to develop high staff quality? Day care centre managers are responsible for day care quality. I therefore wish to track their thoughts and experiences in order to get their views about the quality of the staff and their role as managers. My findings show that the day care centre manager say that they are primarily concerned with the children. Their understanding of staff quality is primarily related to the staff's ability to interact with children, which in my opinion is not surprising. Furthermore, the interviews show that managers use many tools and methods with the aim to improve staff quality. My findings also show that managers report that they spend more and more time on office work and that they have too little time for management of the educational process. The most prominent finding is that managers have complex leadership roles. It also seems to be difficult to differentiate staff quality from general quality in day care centres. The day care centre managers are constantly in some kind of movement between the different tasks and duties: a to and fro movement is indicative of their management style.

Master i barnehagepedagogikk I denne masteroppgaven søkes den pedagogiske tenknings relevans for å fremme barns demokratiske verdier i den norske barnehagen. De aktuelle demokratiske verdiene er medvirkning, omsorg, respekt og ansvar. Dette problemfokus belyses gjennom et teoretisk perspektiv på læring sett i forhold til tre pedagogiske tenkere og deres respektive teorier. De tre pedagogiske tenkerne er Loris Malaguzzi, Friedrich Fröbel og Rudolf Steiner. I tillegg analyseres St.meld. nr.41: Kvalitet i barnehagen (KD, 2008-2009). Det teoretiske perspektivet på læring utgår fra Gert J. J. Biestas bok Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future (2006), med dansk oversettelse Læring Retur: Demokratisk dannelse for en menneskelig fremtid (2009). Ved å stille spørsmål om hvor det menneskelige subjekt blir til, i stedet for hva det er, argumenteres det for at vi kun kan bli et subjekt i en verden som vi deler med andre mennesker som ikke er som oss. Argumentasjonen finner støtte i teori av Hannah Arendt og Emmanuel Lévinas. Tre forskjellige demokratiske subjektforståelser er interessante for mine analyser; den individualistiske, den sosiale og den politiske subjektforståelse. Tekst- og dokumentanalysen viser at kvantitativ og kvalitativ metode kan utfylle hverandre i forskning. Gjennom kvantitativ tekstanalyse av et offentlig dokument har ordtelling framstått som en indikator for å komme ”på spor” av tekstens innhold. Kvalitativ innholdsanalyse har så utdypet den samme teksten i henhold til problemformulering. Kvalitative innholdsanalyser av sitater hentet fra de pedagogiske teorier, er også gitt en innledende oversikt ved bruk av en fast frekvensordliste bestående av sentrale ord fra problemformulering og forskningsspørsmål. Loris Malaguzzi, som den mest aktuelle, men også Friedrich Fröbel og St.meld. nr.41: Kvalitet i barnehagen (KD, 2008-2009), viser seg sammenfallende i en søken etter relevans for å fremme demokratiske verdier i den norske barnehagen, sett gjennom Biestas (2006, 2009) teoretiske perspektiv på læring. Rudolf Steiners pedagogiske tenkning har ikke den samme relevans sett ut fra dette læringsperspektivet. This thesis applies for the relevance of pedagogical thinking according to promote children’s democratic values in the Norwegian kindergarten. The current democratic values are participation, care, respect and responsibility. This issue is illustrated through a theoretical perspective on learning in relation to three educational thinkers and their respective theories. The three educational thinkers are Loris Malaguzzi, Friedrich Froebel and Rudolf Steiner. In addition, St.meld. nr.41: Kvalitet i barnehagen (KD, 2008-2008), will be analyzed. The theoretical perspective on learning is caused by the book Beyond Learning: Democaratic Education for a Human Future (2006), written by Gert J. J. Biesta, with Danish translation Læring Retur: Demokratisk dannelse for en menneskelig fremtid (2009). By asking questions about how the human subjectivity comes into being, instead of what it is, it is argued that we can only be a subject in a world we share with others who are not like us. The argumentation finds support in the theories of Hannah Arendt and Emmanuel Lévinas. Three different conceptions of democratic subjectivity are interesting according to my analysis, the individualistic, the social and the political conception of subjectivity. The analysis of texts and documents shows that the quantitative and the qualitative can complement each other in research. Through quantitative text analysis of a public document, the counting of words has emerged as an indicator to be “on track” of the content of the text. Qualitative content analysis is then elaborated on the same text regarding to the statement of the thesis. Qualitative content analysis of quotations taken from the educational theories, are also provided an introductory overview by using a fixed frequency dictionary consisting of key words from the issue focus and research questions. Loris Malaguzzi, as the most appropriate, but also Friedrich Froebel and St.meld. nr.41: Kvalitet i barnehagen (KD, 2008-2009), shows the convergence in a quest for relevance to the promotion of democratic values in the Norwegian kindergarten, as seen through the theoretical perspective on learning of Gert J. J. Biesta (2006, 2009). The pedagogical thinking of Rudolf Steiner does not have the same relevance, viewed from this perspective of learning.