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A common observation at workshops in collaborative research between ECEC personnel and researchers is that the educational professionals express an expectation that the research partners should tell them what to do and how something is. This clashes with a foundational premise of research – that research entails generating new knowledge – and thus we cannot say beforehand how it is or what should more specifically be done by teachers. In this chapter, the discussion moves beyond this identified challenge, through theoretical analysis of the language used in interprofessional communication. It is argued that the linguistic process of transforming verbs into nouns (i.e., nominalisation) and its ensuing reification (making-into-things), recontextualised in relation to researcher-ECEC personnel collaboration, needs to be problematised through metacommunicating. This is critical in order to avoid constituting knowledge as objects existing beforehand to simply be transmitted from knower (researcher) to receiver (ECEC personnel). Such a view constitutes the latter group as lacking knowledge. In order to recognise different participating groups’ contributions, more active and dynamic metaphors of knowledge – in this text, the notion of knowledging is suggested (cf. languaging and knowing) – are needed in order to promote mutual recognition and agency among participants, an issue at the heart of interprofessional collaborative work.

In this study, we investigate how professionals in early childhood education (ECE) reason about multilingualism. Empirical data are analyzed in terms of ‘traditions of argumentation’ which proposes that we cannot argue for something without, explicitly or implicitly, arguing against something else. The analyses use transcribed data from two focus groups conducted with teachers in two preschools in Sweden. These teachers had experience teaching culturally and linguistically diverse groups of children. The reoccurring rhetorical strategy used by the teachers to talk about their work with multilingual children used a set of contrasts. Three contrasts were identified: (1) I/we versus them (others); (2) here-and-now versus there-and-then; and (3) building ECE on research versus personal experience. The study has implications for teachers and students in preschool teacher education to understand the possible tensions and contrasts inherent in teaching culturally and linguistically diverse children. Rather than simplifying professional practice to either side of a dichotomy, teachers should be encouraged to understand and verbalize the bases of their professional knowledge, and understand the different positions from which they draw knowledge to inform practice.

In this empirical study, we analyse how five-year-old children are socialised into particular interpretive practices indicative of a literate mind. The data come from translation activities where children with their teacher listen to and then talk about how to understand the lyrics to a popular children’s song. The setting is a Finnish–Swedish immersion programme, where Finnish-speaking children are immersed in Swedish. Three such activities were audio recorded. These are analysed according to the principles of Interaction Analysis, that is, how participants sequentially respond to each other’s communicative actions. Theoretically, the study is informed by a sociocultural perspective, highlighting how intramental function, such as reasoning and problem-solving, are contingent on intermental communication. How participating children are introduced to literate distinctions and concepts of interpreting text is therefore premised to be critical to their emerging literate interpretive skills. The results highlight how the children are constantly challenged and supported by the teacher in a zone of proximal development where their abilities to interpret the lyrics discussed are stretched.

This study reports an analysis of how children in a Japanese kindergarten are scaffolded when facing the challenge of collaboratively retelling a kitsune story they have been told. What is referred...

The present study reports an empirical investigation into concept formation of young children. Based on interviews conducted before and after participating in a playfully enacted chemistry lesson at a culture center, it is analyzed how 6-year-old children conceptualize water, molecule, and chemistry. Theoretically, the study is informed by Vygotsky’s cultural-historical perspective on concept formation. The empirical data consist of pre- and post-interviews with children and documentation of their participation in the intermediate activity. This documentation is used in the post-interviews as a mutual ground for talking with the children about what they remember and how they understand the activity they participated in and what the activity intended to illustrate. The results are presented in terms of three inductively generated categories: ‘everyday’, ‘experientially-based’, and ‘generalized experiences’ concepts, respectively. The implications of these findings for early childhood chemistry (science) education are discussed.

The use of apps in preschool has increased considerably during the last few years. Studies have shown that digital technologies are sometimes used to replace analogue artefacts in educational setti...

This study investigates, from a sociocultural perspective on communication and learning, translating as a joint activity and how it supports the development of metalinguistic awareness in children. Data in the form of audio recordings were generated in an English immersion preschool in Finland. In the analysed activity, the participants are engaged in a discussion around word order when translating the lyrics to a children’s song. The study shows how the teacher scaffolds the children’s language learning through providing contrast and using qualifying markers important to promoting the development of metalinguistic awareness. More generally, the study shows how a translation activity can function as a language-learning practice in bilingual early childhood education.

The overarching interest of this study concerns how to outline learning opportunities and support in early childhood education (ECE) without losing its play-based character. More specifically, the study reports an empirical investigation into the evolving activity of a 6.5-year-old child and an adult conversing about the child’s drawing of ‘Numberland’. What the child’s drawing and his discussion about it with the adult tell us about his emergent mathematics skills is analysed. How the child shifts between speaking and enacting as if and as is, and how the adult supports his mathematics understanding through entering into the play-frame are analysed. How imaginary, play-based activities like this can provide the means for ECE and what this implies for the teacher are discussed.

This study concerns children’s aesthetic meaning making in terms of how it is constituted musically, emotionally, and dialogically. We investigate how two 10-year-old children collaboratively engag ...

In his pioneering research on play (in animals), Gregory Bateson theorized play in terms of (meta)communication. Bateson's line of thinking later became fundamental to play research among children. In the present study, we extend this line of investigation. Building on methodological and theoretical advancements, we empirically study play in-depth as communication and metacommunication through an exemplar of child-adult play. The aim with this investigation is to further the empirically grounded theorization of play as (meta)communication and discuss what the implications are for early childhood education and care (ECEC). More specifically, we address questions concerning play as communication and metacommunication as well as adult participation in and contributions to play, which are matters of foremost importance to ECEC. The theoretical concept of triggering, argued to be more functional than scaffolding for conceptualizing the participation and contributions of more experienced participants in play, is presented and differentiated with the help of empirical observations.

In this empirical study we analyse how children (aged four- to six-years-old) through communicative engagement with their teachers around their own drawings are supported in developing representati ...

This study investigates how 6- to 7-year-old children in a bilingual preschool together with their teachers take on the challenge of translating the lyrics to a children’s song from Finnish to English. With an interest in how translation activities can engage children in communication and metacommunication, and facilitate the development of linguistic and metalinguistic awareness, how a decisive matter of translation – that of taking an utterance literally and/or metaphorically – is negotiated among participants is more specifically scrutinized. The study takes a sociocultural theoretical perspective on learning and communication. The study shows how this kind of activity allows teachers to scaffold children engaging in talk about linguistic and metalinguistic matters, pivotal to their language development and comprehension of this kind of text.

In the present study we investigate what problems adolescents in year-nine compulsory school face when trying to learn to play a song together, how they take on these, and how their teacher responds to these problems. The studied practice, where students are to form a band and learn to play a song together in music class, is an example of education modelled on more informal, or out-of-school, practices such as leisure-time band practice. Such remodeled educational practice highlights the question of how to understand teaching. Sociocultural theory provides the framework for the analysis of video observations from classrooms. The results are presented in two sections: first, a global mapping of all problems the eight groups (bands) faced during the project; second, an in-depth analysis of the processes of two of the groups in terms of the central problems they struggle with and how the teacher enters into and contributes to their learning. It is found that the students struggle with basic issues, such as how to start playing a song (together), and that in lack of teaching in response to these problems, the students are precluded from engaging in and experiencing more inherent matters of musical expression. This is particularly unfortunate since the latter being the teacher’s stated intent of the project. In conclusion, this educational practice plays out as a lost opportunity to further a great interest in music in adolescents.

In this chapter, our perspective on teaching, learning and didaktik are presented. What we refer to as didaktik highlights issues concerning content and context, and we therefore discuss these notions more closely.

In this chapter, we analyze how teachers attempt to enter children’s ongoing play. The teachers are found to use a variety of strategies in their attempts to enter and thereby getting access to children’s ongoing play. Four strategies are outlined and exemplified.

In this chapter, we summarize some key findings and theorize these in terms of what we refer to as play-responsive didaktik. We review the previous chapters in terms of critical empirical observations and what they imply. Thereafter, we theoretically elaborate on how to understand teaching and didaktik as relevant to early childhood education. Some conclusions and further meta-comments finalize the chapter and the book.

I artikeln teoretiseras ett undervisningsbegrepp relevant för förskolans verksamhet. Teoretiskt grundas detta begreppsliggörande i såväl ett evolutionärt som i ett pedagogiskt-psykologiskt perspektiv. Några centrala teoretiker vi bygger på är Barnett, Rommetveit, Tomasello och Vygotskij. Vi lokaliserar grunden till undervisning i människors tendens att göra sådant de själva sett/insett synligt också för andra. Institutioner såsom förskolan och skolan förstås här som sätt för samhället att främja bevarandet av ackumulerande erfarenheter hos den växande generationen, något som gör undervisning centralt. Vi ger empiriska exempel på hur språkundervisning kan gestalta sig i dagens förskola; aktiviteter som vi analyserar utifrån de teoretiska begrepp vi introducerar. Några av de begrepp vi skriver fram för att teoretisera undervisning mer allmänt och språkundervisning mer specifikt i förskolan är responsivitet, kommunikativa praktiker, spänningsfältet mellan intersubjektivitet och alteritet, polyfoni och barns skilda erfarenheter, samt lek och lekfullhet. Vikten av att teoretisera undervisning i förskolan utifrån empirisk forskning betonas.

In this chapter, we investigate preschool teachers’ attempts to participate when children are already engaged in playing (alone or with playmates), and we focus on when and why teachers seem to succeed (or not) in their attempts to enter such play.

In this chapter, we give empirical examples of how teachers establish narrative frames for children to play in and from, and what this means to how activities continue. The position of the teacher is highlighted and we analyze the consequences for children’s actions, and the development of the actual play, of different positions taken.

In this chapter, we show how a learning content can be introduced in a child-initiated play frame, without interrupting the play. The chapter therefore gives an example of how what is sometimes referred to as academic content can be promoted through such activity. The analysis clarifies how reading and graphical symbols become structuring resources in children’s play. A real-world problem (as is) is introduced and managed within the fictional realm of play (as if).

In this chapter, we illustrate what the tensions concerning what we refer to in terms of alterity and coordinating as if and as is, imply for playing and teaching. We give empirical examples of how this tension can be successfully handled in ways that integrate play and teaching.

In this chapter, we analyze a prolonged activity from initiation to conclusion, focusing on (i) how the teacher establishes a narrative, imaginary, frame for the activity, (ii) how children participate and contribute to this activity, (iii) what didaktikal challenges are actualized and what support the children are given in the activity, including what contents are constituted, and (iv) what the implications of the activity are for children’s development.

In this chapter, we introduce the topic of the investigation: to theorize how early childhood education can support children’s learning and development in a way that is responsive to, rather than counter, play. We briefly discuss how our line of reasoning reconnects to the continental tradition of didaktik (as fundamentally different form the concept of didactics, as traditionally understood in the English-speaking world).

In this chapter, we study how contents for learning emerge in play. From a didaktik perspective, it is of interest not only to highlight what contents are constituted and how but also how these contents may be appropriated by children in play.