Research directed at institutions focusing on diverse aspects of childrens social and cognitive development outside school is a growing field. This article discusses Swedish school-age educare centres for children between 6-12 years of age before and after school. These centres are regarded as important for young children's learning and care,…

In Europe, there are many different ways in which early childhood education and care professionals are trained. This article investigates how these different forms came into being. Comparing two small, prosperous European countries, Sweden and Switzerland, we analyse the developments in training regimes for early childhood professionals since the…

The aim of the article is to explore norms about care and masculinity in early childhood education and care settings in Indonesia and Sweden. Building on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, it is shown how care in the two nations was produced as ambivalent for men, causing a risk of being accused of working with children for the wrong reasons. Two…

This study highlights teachers' experiences with transition from Swedish preschool to preschool class, i.e. from the daycare centre to the formal school. One assumption was that transition activities, to favour continuity in the long-term, need to focus on children's learning within the target areas that the policy documents specify for preschool.…

This article is positioned in the context of a discussion about an increasing focus on quality in education. The aim of the article is to explore discourses enacted in Systematic Quality Work (SQW) in municipalities and leisure-time centres. In Sweden, SQW comes within the statutory obligations of municipals and leisure-time centres and…

For preservice teachers in early childhood education, having a rich exposure to multiple forms of literacy in diverse communities is an essential dimension of their teacher education. In this study, 10 Australian preservice early childhood education students, in the first year of their course, visit two early childhood settings in a large city in…

It is not only in families that young children are influenced to become members of their culture. Around the world and within individual countries, culture influences how care is provided to infants and toddlers in child care settings. In turn, infants and toddlers begin to learn how to act and think as members of their culture. From ways that…

Swedish leisure-time centres were formerly part of Swedish social and family policies but were transferred to an educational context in the 1990s. This transfer was accentuated by both the Education Act of 2010 and the new teacher training established in 2011, which also included education particularly directed for leisure-time centres. The…

In Sweden, governmental decision-making is based on a social-democratic ideology and a system of representative democracy. In citizens' meetings, the democratic values and norms, that are both a requirement and goal, at are formed. This concept of democracy, and the value system behind it, permeates Swedish culture, and its institutions and…