Developing children's abilities to act safely, respectfully, and responsibly in digital environments has been an essential component of educational systems for all ages. This study aims to explore what adequate digital competence is in early childhood education and how preschool teachers characterise young children's adequate digital competence.…

This article takes a practice perspective on professional learning to contribute through an empirical example of how professional learning can be arranged to enable change in and for professional practice, as well as for nurturing praxis. The theory of practice architectures is used to analyse the process of an action research (AR) in which…

Early childhood educators' math anxiety and its relation to their frequency of pedagogic actions was examined through a questionnaire completed by 352 participants (aged 21-65) representative of the Swedish municipality where the study was conducted. Our sample contained 189 certified preschool teachers and 163 preschool caregivers who…

This article reports how Swedish teachers' aims and practices were modified by an ecosystem services development project that introduced insect hotels, bird boxes and planting to ten preschool yards. Teachers' understanding of ecosystem services, human--nature relationships and the impact of these on nature connectedness showed that their…

The basic idea of a Swedish preschool is that it is a place where children can learn and experience growth in a variety of areas, not least in the social area. According to the Education Act all preschools must annually document and evaluate planned work to prevent and remedy abusive treatment. The aim of this article is to analyse if and how the…

This article seeks to provide a framework for recognizing and realizing the pedagogical potential of arts-science integration in early childhood. Herein, I present five ways of positioning arts vis-à-vis science and associate them with different learning opportunities. I have analyzed if and how these positionings come into play in teachers'…

Photographs constitute an important visual language in contemporary Swedish preschool, as they are legible to young children themselves. This article aims to examine which notions of the child are represented in preschool photographs, and how these notions correlate to notions of the child expressed in the Swedish preschool curriculum. The…

This paper provides a discourse analysis of 12 Swedish sexuality education texts intended for preschool practitioners and published between 1969 and 2021. Using Fairclough's framework, we identify three discourses about children's sexual play in relation to children's sexual agency in the texts: child sexuality as encouraged and entangled with…

This article is based on studies carried out within the "Young children's learning" research education programme. This undertaking involved five graduate students, all recruited from the Swedish preschool system. The licentiate thesis makes up the final product of their education programme, and the focus of each candidate's licentiate…

During the last decade, the notion of norm-critique has had an impact on Swedish educational policymaking, including the gender-equality mission of the Swedish preschool. The aim is to better understand and problematize the relationship between gender equality, as formal curricular content, and norm-critique, as informal curricular content, in…

The empirical data in this study are from a series of two lessons on measurement implemented in seven classes with 119 six-year-old students in Sweden. Both problem solving and problem posing were shown to be important in early mathematics when students in this study worked on one problem-solving task and one problem-posing task on measurement. As…

This article explores and displays some of the literacy events taking place in the context of early childhood education in Sweden. More specifically, the literacy events are part of the educational practices in the atelier of Reggio Emilia inspired preschools in Sweden. As parts of an ethnographic study of aesthetic activities, including digital…

Teachers' professional learning is closely connected to and dependent on different leading practices. Teachers professional learning is regarded as a key factor in successful school development, and development leaders at different levels are assigned to provide for and support such learning. However, the connection between leading and learning…

This study aims to determine what pre-service teachers know about the path of water through the body, and how they intend to explain this knowledge to five-year-old preschool children. This study aims to see the opportunities young children in preschool can obtain from an explanation of the nature of science related to an everyday life activity. A…

In recent decades, refugee immigration has had significant impact on educational contexts in Sweden, with preschools the primary arenas for young children's language learning experiences. The present study examines second language and literacy training practices for immigrant children (aged 1-5) in preschools in Sweden. The empirical data consist…