| Summary: | AbstractCaldemo, Marie (2019). Meetings between teachers and children. The interaction between teachers and children during a day at preschool. Master thesis, Institution of School development and Leadership, Faculty of Education and Society, Malmö University.PurposeThis study investigates what happens in the meetings between teachers and children and how different circumstances affect the meetings between them.MethodThe analysis is based on sound recordings, captured from three teachers’ meetings during three days in three different preschools in a larger Swedish town. The recording were captured using a dictation machine. To augment the material, the teachers also supplied their daily schedules. The analysis of the recordings follows a hermeneutic method, where the whole can be understood from the parts and the parts can be understood from the whole. The study contains a categorization of different kinds of meetings based on the material. My purpose was to discuss the meeting from different perspectives; such as, identity forming, gender consolidating, teaching and directing. The concept “meeting” represents the processes that preschool teachers and other teachers participate in with children. I intended to study what actually happens in the interaction in these meetings.TheoryI study the interaction between teacher and child, using existing theories about meetings to describe what actually happens. Juul and Jensen (2003) argue that the best way to meet the objectives in a preschool in a constructive manner is to base all activities on care and relations. This includes realizing that children learn in different ways; e.g., through observation, conversation and reflection (Öhman 2016). How children actually observe, converse and reflect is affected by how it is received by the teachers they meet. Children need to be listened to, and they need support to express themselves and reflect in together with others. Adults’ interaction with children is the basis for the childrens’ ability to express themselves, converse and think independently. Säljö (2013) view humans as reflecting beings, who socialize to become part of a cultural context. People interact with each other as well as social environments and institutions, and as a result they understand how to behave in that particular environment. The human being becomes both and individual and a member of society, learns established behavior in order to coexist in different contexts. ResultsThe analysis shows that the most influential meetings are those where children are given directives. At the other end of the spectrum were meetings where teachers and children conversed about some topic over longer periods of time. Other research (Rantala 2016) shows that teachers often guide children directly or indirectly through questions. These situations can be characterized as teacher monologues. Guidance through long sentences is at times difficult for children to interpret and comprehend. Many meetings resulted from questions about how to accomplish something, affirming meetings and direct meetings caused by children’s questions. Questions which aimed for making contact or get an answer were common. The conclusion is that the teachers work towards bringing order and structure through directives and questions which aim to gain control. It is primarily routine situations that create those types of meetings. In a study about children’s participation in preschools, Johannesen and Sandvik (2009) concluded that adults control and regulate children’s movement and focus. In their description, adults are in the way of children but they have difficulties putting their finger on what is really going on. They believe their work warrants reflection. The recorded meetings show that the teachers want to be there for the children, work towards better contact and create relations. One of the teachers was less restricted by other activities, and had more freedom to develop relations with the children under a longer period of time. The conclusion is that this opened the opportunity for other types of meetings.
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