Exploring explorative play

Project summary

There is a growing political interest in early childhood education in Norway. From being a desired option for few, there is now kindergartens available for most of the Norwegian children. In some areas, there are even competitions among the owners of kindergartens to attract parents. In addition early interventions to provide for a better future, point at early childhood education as an arena for mending a variety of contemporary problem. Politicians and parents are thereby strong agents to define the content and methods of early childhood education. Research depicts that both the practitioner’s and the involved children’s approaches to education are often not conceptualized or constituted, and are thereby easily colonialized by strong economic and politic intensives.

The Nordic kindergartens have a historical tradition to emphasize play in kindergarten’s curriculum and practices. Play is also regarded as the most important source for children’s learning and development

Method

The project takes departure from the practitioner’s point of view, by their videos of children in playing activities which they find of specific interest. The videos will be watched together with the practitioners, to capture the practitioner’s comments, followed by conversations of why they find this particular activity of interest.  The videos will also be watched together with the involved children to capture their comments and as a start for conversations about their playing everyday life in their kindergarten. This material is to be analyzed drawing on Hedegaard’s concepts of development as individual, institutional and societal processes, seeking to understand what the practitioners see as valuable activities among children, and the children’s understanding of their own videotaped activity. The aim is to straighten both the practitioner's and the children's voices in the choir of agents that constitute the content and methods of early childhood education in Norway.