An absolute majority of all Swedish children begins to attend preschool at some point between the age of one and five. The acclimatisation to preschool means a great change in every small child's life. They leave all that is well known, the parent and their home, to face a whole new environment with new kids and adults to get to know and learn to trust.The purpose of this study has been to find out how the professionals in preschool reflect upon the child's acclimatisation at preschool. More specifically we wanted answers to how the preschool teachers, in their work with the child's acclimatisation, relates to the today, in preschool, much debated relationship between the two perspectives care and pedagogy.This qualitative study is based on ten interviews with preschool teachers at different Preschools in a small town in Sweden. The analysis is based on a presentation of the interview material compared with earlier research and the theoretical aspects we have chosen, which are Bronfenbrenners Ecological Systems Theory and the Object Relations Theory.While working with this paper it has come clear to us that there is no explicit or common definition of the concept of care within preschool, while there is a clear definition of the concept of pedagogy.

The purpose of this study is to examine discourses about norms and norm criticism regarding sex/gender and sexuality in preschool teachers? and nursery nurses? speech using a post-structuralist perspective. My two research questions are:How do the educators describe norms in general and norms about sex/gender and sexuality in relation to their work?How do the educators describe their work with norm criticism in relation to norms about sex/gender and sexuality?The theoretical base of this thesis is feminist post-structuralism and queer theory. Qualitative interviews were used as method to gather material and then a form of discourse analysis was made based on the transcribed interviews.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to highlight three preschool teachers and three child nurses? views on the educational work tool pedagogical documentation and Reggio Emilia educational philosophy, often associated with pedagogical documentation. Preschool teachers and child nurses? are all employees under the same pre-school director, and works on three Preschools located in the same area. The purpose of the selection of respondents is based on highlighting how far the staff describes the concept of educational documentation, and pedagogy of Reggio Emilia, and how far their statements are consistent with each other or not.Questions: The thesis is based on three questions;How does preschool teachers and child nurses? describe pedagogical documentation?How does preschool teachers and child nurses? describe the Reggio Emilia pedagogical philosophy?If there are differences between the preschool teachers and child nurses?, what could these mean for the pedagogical documentation in preschool?Method: The study is based on empirical data collected through qualitative interviews.

This work deals with mathematics teaching in preschool classes. The purpose of my study is to investigate the preschool classes? teachers' aspirations for the children learning mathematics in two different Preschools. To achieve my goal, I formulated the following questions to be explored and answered through interviews with five teachers.  Does mathematics in preschool classes have a prominent role in educators' planning? What perception do the educators in the field have about the learning and teaching of mathematics in the preschool classes? How do the teachers understand their own work with mathematics in preschool classes in relation to multilingual students?                                A qualitative interview method was applied.

In December 2008 the municipal council in Nybro, decided that the municipality shouldreduce the budget for food service. The budget should be reduced by 2 100 000 SEK.They decided that the children- and education committee, and the care committee would haveto lower their budget with 1 264 000 SEK respectively 636 000 SEK. The change have to bedone under two years, 60 % should be done under 2009 and 40 % under 2010.As a result of the decision, many kitchens have to become kitchens that only serve food, notcook it. This will result in preschool staff and nursing staff take over some of the tasks fromthe kitchen staff. The municipal council also decided that entrepreneurs could take over one(later two) cooking areas.A kitchen that serves food means that there isn?t any cooking involved.

This essay is about my meeting as an educator at a preschool with a child who is deemed to be in need of special assistance. I have worked in Preschools and schools for nearly fifteen years and have met a great many children with different needs during these years. I tell in this essay about my relationship with Lucas who is a child I feel need special support in his everyday life. Lucas has what we in the preschool world call impulse controlled behavior. I also feel that he is disturbed by external stimuli such as sound and he has difficulty with social interactions with friends.

The Swedish early childhood system is considered among the best in the world, however, in spite of this, we feel that there exists a conflict between educators? and parents? expectations of ?a good preschool?. During our teacher education training we have observed many different Preschools and almost in all of them we have listened to anecdotes about one or more conflicts arising between educators and parents and which we have been able to pinpoint toward differing expectations. After talking with a preschool director, who also perceives that expectations of the preschool aims sometimes differ, our idea brought us to conduct this investigation.In this study, we have investigated parents? expectations of preschool and compared them with educators? expectations.

One of the main objectives of all food production is to produce foods that can safely beconsumed without fear of being sick. Despite this hundreds of people are affected in Sweden offood poisoning almost every day. Most cases are caused by a small group of so-called pathogenicmicroorganisms. The most frequently affected are the small children, the elderly, persons withreduced resistance and pregnant. The reasons behind the food poisoning are often ignorance andlack of food hygiene.

The aim of this essay is to examine the supervisor?s view on the structure and content of the tasks given to students during their vocational training. The investigation could be of help for teachers when devising new vocational training tasks. The study is based upon qualitative interviews with five supervisors, all of whom work at Preschools. The supervisors were asked to grade all the vocational training tasks on a scale from one (easy) to five (difficult).

The pre-school is seen by many as the place where children get equipped for the future and the challenges there of. One of the most important aims according of the curriculum for Swedish Preschools is that children get the opportunity, in interaction with the pedagogues, to develop their identity and to feel secure and satisfied with themself. Although, in the curriculum of the Swedish preschool system there is a comprehensive focus on the children?s competencies and learning, the importance that the children feel secure is not that prominent. Consequently a paradox occurs between the focus on children?s competencies and their need for care.

The aim of this study is, from a norm-critical approach, to find, investigate and analyse human representation in the visual culture of one preschool in order to understand if the children enrolled are represented or not. The research questions are: In what ways is there imagery of human representations in images and materials designed for play? What skin-colors and origins are dominant in the data collected?We carried out a qualitative study in the form of visual ethnography. This method allowed us to use a combination of different data collection tools such as photography and ethnographic field notes to collect our data. The photographs we took of images and material used for play, was then analysed through semiotic picture analysis.

The aim of this study is, from a norm-critical approach, to find, investigate and analyse human representation in the visual culture of one preschool in order to understand if the children enrolled are represented or not. The research questions are: In what ways is there imagery of human representations in images and materials designed for play? What skin-colors and origins are dominant in the data collected?We carried out a qualitative study in the form of visual ethnography. This method allowed us to use a combination of different data collection tools such as photography and ethnographic field notes to collect our data. The photographs we took of images and material used for play, was then analysed through semiotic picture analysis.

The purpose of this study was to find out how young children are allowed to influence and affect their daily lives in Preschools, as well as teachers? views on the latter. My interest in this topic is born out of my experience of working with both younger and older preschool children. My view is that democratic work with older children is largely based on direct verbal communication while with toddlers it is based on an adult?s interpretation of a child?s often non-verbal expressions.

The purpose of this study is to examine the usage of IT technology within preschool and study how IT tools are used by preschool staff for administrative as well as pedagogical assignments. Several aspects affects the work preschool staff do with IT which concerns availability to technology, how technology is used and how technology is made available for the children. There are a number of questions linked to these aspects where some examples this study examines are which advantages, disadvantages, obstacles or other limitations that comes with introducing IT? This study also examines how, when and in what contexts IT is being used? Other questions examined are the pedagogue?s general views of IT, competence development and eventual needs of investment? Further on this study examines to some part how children interact with IT during pedagogical activities? The overall objective is to shed light on problems that preschool staff encounter  in their daily work and on the basis of identifying important questions at issue that could constitute a basis for further research. The results of this study are based on both a literature review and a field study.

The objective of this study is to investigate a new pedagogical material called 4DFrame, how it is experienced by informants and how suitable it is in education - in particular mathematics. Socioculturalperspective has a central role in this study when students are given opportunities for linguistic and social interaction during the experiment with the new pedagogical material. The methodology for this study has been visits, interviews, and observations. The study reveals that there are different views on the didactic potential for mathematics of the new teaching material, though no conclusions can be drawn regarding whether this material is more or less suitable in teaching since no research have been found that compares this with other pedagogical materials. Both national and international studies show the need to find alternative and better ways to make mathematic education meaningful.