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The preschool teacher: A caring professional or a rebellious robot?
Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (starting 2013), Department of Educational Studies (from 2013).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3774-5853
2020 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation only (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

The research topic focus on aspects of preschool teacher profession expressed in narratives including the #pressatläge. The hashtag #pressatläge occurs in more than thousand narratives written by preschool teachers. The aim of the study is to discover how the current situation in the Swedish preschool affect the preschool teacher profession. In the Swedish preschool, the percentage of staff with an academic degree has reduced, and the mental illness caused by stress has decreased. Several narratives show large groups of children and an increased number of children with special needs. In 2019, there were changes in the preschool curriculum. Examples of changes were the clarification of the concept teaching and increased subject didactic requirements. The aim of this study is to discover how the changed situation in the preschool affects the preschool teacher profession. 

Förskoleupproret is a Facebook created by preschool teachers. The group works for improve the conditions in the Swedish preschool. In 2017, Förskoleupproret invited their members to using the hashtag #pressatläge to share their stories about the untenable situation in Swedish preschools. A thousand stories including the hashtag #pressatläge, written and submitted by preschool teachers, were collected (Förskoleupproret, 2018). My research questions deal with what aspects of the profession become superior vs. subordinated in the written narratives, and how do teachers handle their professional responsibility, while fighting to improve the working conditions in Swedish preschools. I have read all the narratives and will choose a sample to analyses how the preschool teachers write about colleagues, preschool children and preschool children’s parents.

Analyses of the data will be conducted from theories of teacher professionalism and institutional narratives. These theories enable analyses of what aspects of the profession become superior vs subordinated and how preschool teachers handle their professional responsibility. The overall results is that the narratives indicate that caring preschool teachers, striving to get the time to fulfil children’s safety and needs, are pushing themselves to exhaustion. Narratives about how preschool teachers sacrifice their leisure time to perform well at work and how they struggle to find the time to complete their work become visible in the written stories. Furthermore, analyses will continue on written aspects about colleagues, preschool children, and the preschool children’s parents as well on aspects that are not mentioned in the narratives, and hence might become subordinated in the teacher profession. 

This presentation is highly relevant to Nordic educational research. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram contain many different groups where preschool teachers exchange ideas and participate in discussions. Institutional narratives about the absence of possibilities to work according to the preschool curriculum, might contribute to knowledge about how the preschool teacher profession might be understand from teachers written net-based narratives. Furthermore, the analyses contribute with increasing knowledge about aspects of the preschool that are unsuitable to express in public narratives. 

Förskoleupproret. (2018). Berättelser. Retrieved from https://forskoleupproret.weebly.com/beraumlttelser.html

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2020.
Keywords [en]
Preschool, preschool teacher, teacher profession, social media
National Category
Pedagogical Work
Research subject
Educational Work
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-88171OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kau-88171DiVA, id: diva2:1631458
Conference
NERA Congress
Available from: 2022-01-24 Created: 2022-01-24 Last updated: 2022-02-03Bibliographically approved

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Lennartsdotter, Maria

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
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Language
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