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In our introduction to the section on early childhood pedagogies, we point out and discuss some key features of the represented approaches: Frobel, HighScope, Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP), Waldorf, Cultural-Historical, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia. Each approach is briefly located in a cultural and historical frame. We then analyze and critically discuss the leading metaphors of the reasoning behind these approaches.

In this chapter, we use original data from early childhood education to illustrate, analyse and discuss an important distinction in learning, what something looks like and what it is. The difference and relation between these two claims, we argue are of great interest when studying learning and it emphasizes how our perceiving is mediated by cultural tools. Managing this distinction could be conceptualized in terms of the dialectics between everyday and scientific concepts. Several examples from research are used to show how metaphors and simile can be used for teaching science concepts to young children. It is shown how the analysis of the data has emphasized the important distinction and relationship between what something looks like and what it is. That is, children need to be able to discern the object or phenomenon represented (modeled, illustrated) from the mode of representing it. The communicative frame established by the teachers leaves space for children’s playful similes. How children perceive the phenomenon being observed, and how they engage with this description is discussed in this chapter. Two or more people sharing attention on a third area is fundamental to education. To establish in speech how to mediate or represent what is observed is one way of coordinating perspectives with this end goal in mind.

This chapter illustrates and discusses how to produce valid knowledge about children’s concepts in science (understanding, learning, development). The discussion presented revolves around a theoretical presentation of communication and re-analyses of empirical data from published research on children’s reasoning and understanding. Through this analysis, the chapter examines how images of children’s competences in research are produced. The chapter also examines children’s understandings of the interview situation, showing how the ‘same situation’ is conceptualized differently by the interviewer and the child. In addition, the communicative framing and analysis process are critiqued in order to demonstrate how the research interview, as a common method of research into children’s science understanding, needs to be reconceptualised as a social practice, where the collaborative unfolding and meaningful exchange between interviewer and child is foregrounded.

This final chapter for the third part of the book illustrates the key points made in the chapters of this book and discusses these within the framework of cultural-historical theory. Semiotic mediation of cultural tools and practices in the differing forms feature in this section. In science, and science education, mediation is more commonly referred to in terms of ‘representation’. Taking a cultural-historical perspective, cultural tools such as graphic data or speech, do not simply re-present phenomena and processes, they also constitute these in distinct manners for various purposes in different activities. Different mediation not only ‘map’ different aspects of something, but mediation contributes to how we conceive this ‘something’ to be.

In this chapter we discuss forms of knowledge construction and consider these in relation to early childhood science education literature. We examine different regions of the world to see how research in science education has developed and what it has allowed us to better understand about the young learner. We consider the forms of logic drawn upon by scholars in the Australasia and South Pacific region, in the European and Nordic region, and the US. In order to understand the contributions these scholars have made for early childhood science education, we explore the forms of knowledge within the context of the child development paradigms that have underpinned science education. Our analysis of the literature draws upon a critique the following three paradigms: the individualistic paradigm, the social interactionist paradigm, and a cultural-historical paradigm. In this chapter empirical examples are presented in their original form from the country from which they were generated. This locates the research and theoretical concepts, but it also gives a more genuine international focus when conceptualsing science learning.

In this chapter the nature of the educational encounter is presented. The educational encounter is conceptualized primarily as an interaction between an adult (e.g., a preschool teacher, acting as a more experienced peer) and a child. How the encounter plays out in a concrete sense is critical for understanding what opportunities children are given and what kind of support they receive during their learning of science. A cultural-historical perspective on learning and development shows that communicative support is fundamental to a child’s development and this perspective is different from an exploratory-based notion of children’s development where they develop by their own accord as they explore the world. While an exploratory view could explain some learning, it is insufficient to explain more abstract forms of knowledge such as typical scientific knowledge. The chapter also discusses how not all encounters between two (or more) people can be viewed as an educational encounter. The idea of a scientific encounter with distinctive features is introduced in this chapter.

In this chapter figurative (metaphorical and similar) speech is discussed in the context of the distinction between “as is” and “as if” statements. Representational practices and modeling phenomena are all examples of semiotic mediation. Since learning is understood as the appropriation of cultural tools that come to mediate the learner’s engagement with the world, how teachers introduce children to, and support them in appropriating such tools, is the focus of attention of this chapter. It is argued that what others have experienced can be made into cultural tools. That is, these cultural tools are represented as artefacts, such as speech, writing, images, drawings, pictures and recordings. Throughout history, human experience and knowing have collectively accumulated in the form of cultural tools and artefacts. Empirical data on the topic of teaching about the human body taken from a preschool is presented in order to examine how teachers allow or even encourage children to ‘take’ or use representation tools (e.g. drawing) and metaphorical speech during conceptual play.

In this chapter metaphors and related figures of speech are shown to be necessary and integral parts of sense making and learning. It is shown how this kind of speech has been studied in research in relation to children’s understanding and learning. It is argued that different methodological approaches have led to different notions of children’s abilities. Two recent studies on children and metaphorical speech in science-learning activities in preschool are introduced. One study investigated the nature and use of such speech and another study looked at a particular form of metaphorical speech, anthropomorphism. It is argued that metaphor is one way of establishing relations between different things without collapsing them into one and the same.

In this chapter we will focus on play and playfulness in terms of children’s language play and how such speech can be used in developing children’s linguistic awareness and ability to use language in creative ways. Drawing on our previous research on children’s speech, poetry making and language play in early childhood education, we will illustrate and discuss how certain speech-based cultural tools can be appropriated in institutional settings.

The study reported in this chapter is an empirical investigation of the appropriation of narrative skills in young children (1–4 years). The important distinction between a narrative and a paradigmatic mode of sense making is clarified and discussed. Then two different narrative practices are analysed. In the first, two teachers and a group of children collaborate in planning a story. In the second, a child’s spontaneous telling of what he has experienced is elaborated primarily through the participation of the teachers. How the teachers scaffold the children’s story-telling and how the children respond to this support are scrutinised. The importance and implications of learning to narrate is emphasised and discussed.

This study follows the process of a circle-dance project with 6- to 8-year-old children over an entire school term. Children and teachers dance a traditional circle dance and speak about it. The children also make drawings of the dance. Analysis of the children’s as well as the teachers’ learning shows how the dance notations invented by the children and conversing about these facilitate their discernment of features of the dance, while the teachers develop their skill at asking productive questions, that is, asking questions that give them access to the children’s perspectives on the dance and the representation of it. The role of graphic and linguistic representations of dance in arts education is discussed.

In this book, we have studied children’s learning in naturalistic settings in preschools and primary schools. The children were 1–9 years of age and their learning was studied in regard to a variety of domains of knowing: mathematics , ecology , music , dance, narrative (language) and visual art . In addition, children’s learning in a more encompassing form than one confined to particular domains of knowing has been studied (democracy , moral and gender learning). In this final chapter, we will point out some overarching themes and tensions that have come to the fore over the course of the empirical studies. What can we learn from these studies about children’s—and, if to a lesser degree, the teachers’—learning in a goal-directed preschool? What features may constitute didactics for early childhood education?

Foreword.- Preface.- Introduction and frame of the book Niklas Pramling and Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson.- Learning to narrate: Appropriating a cultural mould for sense-making and communication Niklas Pramling and Elin Eriksen Odegaard.- Early mathematics in the preschool context Elisabet Doverborg and Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson.- Opening doors for learning ecology in preschool Susanne Thulin and Gustav Hellden.- Pictures of spring: Aesthetic learning and pedagogical dilemmas in visual arts Marie Bendroth Karlsson.- Didactic challenges in the learning of music-listening skills Cecilia Wallerstedt.- Moral discoveries and learning in preschool Eva Johansson.- Gender Learning in Preschool Practices Anette Hellman.- Democracy learning in a preschool context Anette Emilson.- Early childhood literacy and children's multimodal expressions in preschool Elisabeth Mellgren and Karin Gustafsson.- Mind your step: Representation and the trajectory of a circle-dance project with 6-8-year-old children Niklas Pramling and Cecilia Wallerstedt.- Pedagogical quality in preschool: A commentary Sonja Sheridan.- Didactics in early childhood education: Reflections on the volume Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson and Niklas Pramling.- Index.

Research is always carried out in a specific time and context and is based on certain perspectives. All studies presented here are from a Nordic context (see also Einarsdottir, J., & Wagner, J. (Eds.). (2006). Nordic childhoods and early education: Philosophy, research, policy, and practice in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Greenwich: Information Age), but the theoretical frames will vary. This will be clear in each chapter. However, in this chapter, we will place the book in its historical and cultural context. More specifically we will be focusing on: Contemporary Early Childhood Education (ECE). What is didactics? The distinction between the process and product of learning. Profession-related research. A brief presentation of the chapters to follow and their theoretical frameworks. The opening of a debate on educational objectives in the light of educational research.

Eleven-month-old Matilda is with her parents in the laundry room where they are hanging out the washing. All the washed and wet clothes are in a pile on the floor. Matilda sits down amidst the clothes while her parents hang shirts and sweaters on hangers. Matilda roots about among the clothes and finds two socks of the same kind, pink with white dots on. She holds one sock in each hand, looks up at her parents, laughs and waves the two socks in the air. Through her actions, Matilda displays some of her many skills. She has noticed symmetry, something that is central to aesthetic knowing as well as to mathematics. However, for her skills to develop into, for example, skills in mathematics (principles such as pairs, number, etc.) or aesthetics (understanding how the beautiful patterns of the fabric and the colours are “constructed”, etc.), we suggest that it will be necessary for her to be introduced into and engaged in speech mediation by another (an adult).