VI LÄRARE DEBATT: Regeringens uppdrag till Skolverket – att göra utbildningen i förskolan skärmfri – riskerar att ge negativa och allvarliga konsekvenser, särskilt för barn som är i störst behov av att möta en digitaliserad värld med stöd av utbildade förskollärare och barnskötare. Det skriver 27 barn- och förskoleforskare i ett gemensamt upprop.

Background

Although science and technology are viewed as closely related subjects, they are rarely combined in preschools.

Purpose

This article investigates preschool teachers’ perspectives on integrating digital tools when teaching science, asking how and why they use digital tools, and examining the affordances they experience and obstacles they encounter when incorporating digital tools.

Sample

Eighteen Swedish preschool teachers volunteered to participate in the study.Design and methodData were collected through group interviews and analyzed using a thematic approach, together with the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, to obtain a more detailed picture of the teachers’ experiences.

Results

Most of the participants were positive about using digital tools when teaching children science, and they emphasized the need for training on how to use the tools themselves. The preschool teachers viewed digital tools as good complements to other tools when teaching science and to find information about science facts. Moreover, there were generic reasons for using digital tools, such as to stimulate critical reflections among the children, to document activities and to create stimulating learning environments. However, one group of preschool teachers struggled with integrating digital tools when teaching science.

Discussion

Digitalization in preschools and the rest of society is developing. The preschool teachers found possibilities and challenges in using digital tools when teaching children science. Still, future studies are needed to investigate how this will develop. In addition to the results, we found that TPACK served as a useful framework for analyzing and discussing our results. Therefore, we recommend TPACK when analyzing and discussing the use of digital tools in future preschool studies.

This study explores the interaction between students and teachers in subject-specific

vocational education, specifically focusing on the hair and make-up stylist classroom

within the handicraft programme in Swedish upper secondary school. The aim is to

understand the role and significance of the mirror in enabling teacher-student

interaction and mutual understanding. By integrating Conversation Analysis and

Variation Theory into a unified approach (CAVTA), the study seeks to provide

comprehensive insights into the ‘what’ and ‘how’ aspects of learning. CAVTA enables

the identification of the visible content in teaching and how it manifests in the staged

vocational education setting. The findings reveal the teacher’s strategic use of the mirror

to emphasise critical aspects of the Object of learning, in this study referring to the

application of eye shadow. This utilisation of the mirror serves as a valuable teaching

tool in the interaction between the teacher and student.

Student teachers who previously have gained academic knowledge or vocational skills often find it challenging to transform content knowledge into teaching activities that contribute to their future secondary students’ learning. Student teachers express a need for pedagogical tools, time to practice, and opportunities for reflection. Previous research has shown that this can be achieved through micro-teaching, which in our interpretation implies that student teachers practice teaching 1) with a limited subject-specific content 2) for a limited amount of time 3) in a low-stakes situation. The aim of this study is to investigate in what ways micro-teaching can support student teachers in designing and conducting subject-specific and pedagogical teaching activities. Our research method is inspired by action research, and conducted in four steps. The first step is to carefully plan how to implement micro-teaching for student teachers in our own teaching. The second step is the implementation. In a third step, we evaluate student teachers’ experiences from conducting micro-teaching through a survey and individual interviews. The fourth step involves analyzing the results, and adjusting our initial plan for implementation of micro-teaching, if needed. Together, these four steps make up the first cycle. We plan to conduct a second cycle before the research questions can be answered. At the time of writing, we are conducting a first cycle in different subjects. Since the study is still in its infancy, there are no results to report, but we expect to find both similarities and differences between the different subjects in how micro-teaching can support student teachers in transforming existing content knowledge into teaching activities.

These results derive from a project on preschool student teachers’ professional development. The basic idea was that issues of democracy – discussed and talked about in different forms and contexts – are vital to become part of teachers’ agency. Thus, the project aimed to explore how the student teachers developed democratic agency during their teacher education.

Theoretically, the project was grounded in an understanding of teacher agency, in which experiences, different contextual aspects as well as temporal dimensions are taken into account. For 7 semesters, a group of 10-20 preschool student teachers in Sweden participated voluntarily in the project throughout their entire teacher education. Our method was to gather regularly in conversations with the students in ‘horizontal networks’. These worked as arenas for the students to challenge their thoughts on democracy and values without being graded for their developing opinions. We were four researchers that, in about 70 occasions, met with the students in such conversations about their future profession. Our roles were to take part of reflections on issues of democracy and teaching profession.

Our main results show that the students developed democratic agency though active participating in horizontal networks. The students themselves were able to describe the value of participating and how they perceived their democratic agency to be more developed compared to non-participating fellow students. The students in focus were able to reflect on issues of democracy in society, how they possibly could act differently in situations with children, colleagues and other actors in the preschool, issues that in previous research have been found to be difficult.

The results demonstrate a need to clearly focus on issues of democracy in the teacher education in order to develop future teachers’ democratic agency, which doubtless has become even more necessary in the present democratically troublesome times.