Den unika möjligheten - en studie av den svenska förskolemodellen 1968-1998

• Main Author: Hammarström-Lewenhagen, Birgitta
• Format: Doctoral Thesis
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Stockholms universitet, Barn- och ungdomsvetenskapliga institutionen 2013
• Subjects: Swedish preschool-model; educare; preschool didactics; equality; democratization; lifelong learning; social prevention; field of forces; discursive struggle; abductive textual analysis
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-95880; http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:isbn:978-91-7447-326-1

The Swedish preschool-model interlaces care, nurturing and learning and is organised to solve twin functions; providing children a playbased learning-environment and enabling parents to combine parenthood with work. The model was developed within the social sector then incorporated into the educational system 1998. This shift and the model´s “unique characteristics” praised by OECD formed the point of departure for this study. The aim of the thesis is to describe and analyse the discussions and negotiations shaping the Swedish preschool-model during 1968-1998. The research questions address: discursive themes; actors involved; governmental intentions; claims about the preschool´s task, pedagogical content and the preschool´s institutional identity and relationship to the institutions: social service, school and family. The study utilized abductive textual analysis inspired by discourse analysis and narrative approaches. Main text sources are: official reports, bills, steering documents, the preschool teachers´ periodical 1968 -1998 and a media debate. The results illuminate preschool-teachers´ struggle for a pedagogical identity and the construction of the educareconcept as a flexible and pragmatic solution to several societal interests and values. Governmental intentions concerning equality, emancipation and democratization have had great influence on the process in combination with a recurring theme about a revised preschool pedagogy with a strengthened focus on children´s learning. Political efforts to foster a preschool for all in a future are identified and described as one of the main discursive themes. Different standpoints about earlier school start are analyzed.  The overall result is that the framework and core features of the model laid down by the National Commission on Child care still has a great impact on the launched syllabus (Lpfö) in the end of the period as on the curriculum in a broader sense.