This article reports on teachers' experience of working during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis is based on a thematic analysis of group interviews with 76 teachers working throughout the Swedish school system, i.e., preschools, primary, secondary school, and municipal adult education. The interviews were conducted during autumn 2021.…

This study investigates preschool teachers' perceptions about the pedagogical use of digital play and, by using the Learning in Working Life framework as a theoretical point of departure, it also investigates how these perceptions are connected to the teachers' professional learning environment. Participants wrote a self-report essay about digital…

Preschool teachers in Sweden are expected to document children's learning and assess their learning outcomes, for the purpose of long-term evaluation and to develop the educational preschool practice. Previous research shows that the tools for documenting individual learning are particularly focusing on children's cognitive knowledge, while the…

We investigate the importance of spatial, material, and organisational factors to gendered peer relations on the school football pitch. The study is part of an ethnographic research project exploring the relations between school bullying and the institutional context of schooling, focusing on the perspectives of teachers and pupils from preschool…

The physical environment in early childhood education and care is crucial. This paper examines the Swedish government's vision of preschool design in the welfare state of the 1970s and the conceptions of children and society upon which it was based. Presenting an investigation of reports, booklets, and study materials published by various branches…

The aim of this article is to acquire knowledge regarding children's influence and the construction of gender during free play situations in preschools in different local contexts. Attention is focused on both children's choices and pedagogical practices in which free play takes place. The research draws on ethnographic studies based on…

This article is from a study about the integration of refugee children (aged one to five) and their families in Sweden. Refugee children and parents who have received a residence permit are entitled to be introduced into the Swedish society. One of the first encounters refugee children and families have with Swedish society is with the preschool.…

This article contributes to the discussion on goal-oriented learning in play-based early childhood education, an issue highlighted in Sweden due to revisions of preschool curricula and contemporary research in education. The article presents a meta-study of insights from a project consisting of several studies conducted in authentic preschool…

We discuss oral history interviews with academics who laid the foundation of research and pedagogies in daycare for under three-year-olds in Europe and North and South America since the 1970s. Their work is clearly embedded in the social-political context of their country: the left-wing programmes for disadvantaged families in the U.S.A.;…

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 representational insight, that is, going from indicative sign-making to symbolic understanding. Theoretically, the analysis is informed by a sociocultural…

This article aims to examine dominant discourses and changing paradigmatic views on children's learning and well-being in preschool in relation to theories on learning and research on quality and policy in Sweden. The key question: what are the main changes in policy, pedagogy and views of children's learning? The article builds on research that…

The aim of the 2018 International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA) conference was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There have been advances in both cognitive…