Den här studiens syfte är att undersöka hur förskolan arbetar med Grön flagg och om det finns likheter och skillnader med arbetssättet mellan olika förskolor. Fem pedagoger från olika förskolor intervjuades och observationer genomfördes i två av förskolorna. Resultatet som framgick var att pedagogernas arbetssätt var i enlighet med organisationen Grön flaggs uppsatta mål med teman och delmål. Förskolornas arbete fungerade bra och pedagogerna upplevde Grön flagg som ett positivt miljöutbildningsprogram. Samtliga pedagoger var överens om att hållbar utveckling är ett viktigt ämne att arbeta med i förskolan eftersom ett sunt hållbart förhållningssätt ligger i tiden. Barnen är vår framtid och det är de som kan göra en betydande insats och skillnad. Barns delaktighet och pedagogernas syn på barns lärande ses som grundläggande byggstenar i arbetet. Det framgick även skillnader mellan förskolorna i studien, då tiden som läggs ner på Grön flagg varierade. / This study aim to find out how preschool works with Green flag and if there are similarities and differences in approach between different preschools. Five teachers from differentpre-schools interviewed and observations were made in two of the pre-schools. The result showed that teachers' practices were in accordance with the organization Green Flagg's goals with the theme and sub-goals. Preschool work went well and the teachers experienced Green flag as a positive environmental education program. All teachers agreed that sustainable development is an important topic to work with preschool, because a healthy and sustainable approach is seen as important in today´s society. Children are our future and they are the ones who can make a significant contribution and difference. Children's participation and teachers' views on children's learning is seen as fundamental building blocks of the work. The study also showed differences between the pre-schools according time spent on Green flag, witch between the pre-schools.

The purpose with this study has been to get a previous knowledge about how pre-school teachers look at the impact of the picture book for children and their language development and participation at the age of three to five years. The study was carried through inquiries at a pre-school in a west Swedish urban district. The study proceed from the sociocultural theory which means that children learn by teamwork with other more experienced individuals. The result shows that the pre-school teachers consciously let the interest of the children guide the choice of books. At the same time they push for the meaning of conversation with the children. The pre-school teachers prefers to work with a smaller group in picture book readings to stimulate language weak children and make them participant more. The children can look for and count things in the pictures, and the adults got a bigger focus on the talking child. Picture books are also meaningful in a theme at the pre-school. In the literature language is power and the children dare to take place, and that makes them participate in the pedagogical activity which takes place at the pre-school.

Based around a case study of the traditional toy industry, the research examines how companies create trust with parents, the main toy purchasers, and the importance of ethical behaviour in trust development when a vulnerable community is involved. Previous literature has revealed that trust leads to mutually beneficial company-consumer relationships but scholars have failed to agree on its definition, dimensions or measurement due to its complexity, diversity and intangibility. Few have distinguished between 'trustworthiness' as a moral quality of organisations and 'trust', which is a consumer judgement about companies and brands, made as part of their purchase deliberations. A review of the literature led to the development of a framework of trustworthy behaviour identifying five sets of antecedents (organisational, individual, control, relational and branding factors) and four key dimensions with related variables - 'Integrity' and 'Benevolence', relating to ethical constructs and 'Commitment' and 'Satisfaction', relating to organisational constructs. The model was then substantiated through qualitative research with a sample of senior managers in 12 leading toy companies and other stakeholders including industry body representatives, retailers and parents. The findings revealed that in a challenging economic climate, trust in toy companies is being driven principally by the marketing offer and by external influencers such as legislators, retailers, licensors, and the media. Examples of good ethical practices were identified, although often unnoticed by consumers, and the worthier companies, for whom trustworthiness was important, appeared to be faring less well economically than companies selling third party brands. Consumers' trust was significant in the preschool market but diminished in importance as children matured when their influence overrode parents' more rational purchase considerations. The research revealed a paradox that parents as well as children are vulnerable consumers who are often bypassed in the marketing process. Whatever children's consumer rights, there will always be a lack of trust in the industry whilst young children rather than parents are so blatantly targeted.

The purpose of this study is to understand how do some pre-school teachers and parents in Pakistan perceive the concepts of gender and gender equality. The study has been completed through interviews based on four key questions, which are: How do two pre-school teachers in Pakistan understand their teaching practice in relation to gender? How do two parents think of treating their children equally regardless gender in pre-school and how do they think girls and boys should be raised? The method I have used for this research is qualitative method. I have been interviewing two pre-school teachers and two parents in a pre-school environment, located in Karachi Pakistan. In order to analyze the result and to get a deeper understanding of the collective knowledge gathered from the interviews, theories surrounding gender equality and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory have been used. Earlier research done within this area has been used to put this study into perspective. The results of this study shows that the teachers perceive gender as a social construction and that gender is a creation of social interaction. In the study's results, shows that parents believe that boys and girls should get equal treatment at pre-school regardless their gender.

This graduate work is about didactic issues related to the preschool environment. The study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how the preschool teachers can plan and design the indoor environment to promote children's development and learning. We will also examine how the work of the preschool indoor environment relates to the kindergarten curriculum. This will be examined through qualitative interviews with teachers at a preschool in Botkyrka municipality. The thesis is based on an inductive study method so the theoretical approach has been chosen by the informants' responses. As a complement to the previous research, we have chosen to base our study in Vygotsky's educational psychology to clarify the interactions between the environment and children's development and learning. The informants in our study described, among other things, that their work with preschool indoor environment is based on an environmental document, which is an evolving supplement to the kindergarten curriculum. They create various "corners" or base environments where children can meet and learn from each other. These base environments are designed in the way that they are self-explanatory, that is, the children develop into independent individuals.

The purpose of this thesis was to study how preschool teachers interpret the values of the preschool curriculum that relates to culture and how the teachers describe how they work with these values in their professional practice. The study is based on social constructive and discourse analytic perspectives. I have studied how preschool teachers construct the concept of culture and the values of the preschool curriculum through a specific way to describe this. A specific way to talk about something is called a discourse. In other words I have studied preschool teachers expressed discourses about culture and their professional practice with the values of the preschool curriculum. To study this, I've done interviews with four preschool teachers. In the interviews I let the teachers interpret the words from the pre-school curriculum that relate to culture and describe how they work with these in their professional practice. In the next step I used the transcribed interviews for the discourse analysis. I did the analysis by searching for discursive patterns in what preschool teachers say. It appeared that all preschool teachers used the same words in the interpretations and descriptions, and that some of these words were described to have internal relationships between each other. The words that were described to relate to each other were: The family and The preschool, Similarity and Difference, and The individual and the Group. But the words and the relationships where described in different ways in the interpretations of the curriculum and in the descriptions of the practical work. I interpreted this to be two different discourses, one discourse about the words in curriculum and one discourse about their practical work. I call these: The discourse about the theory and The discourse about the practice. Within the discourse about the theory all children were described as culturally different from each other and that was a positive value that the pre-school should plan the work around. The work should also be planned around the children’s individual interests and cultures. The relationship between the family and the preschool where described as an important and unproblematic part of this work. In the discourse about the practice only some children was described as different. It was the children that by the teachers were interpreted as non-Swedish. Only these where described to have an individual culture, different from the Swedish culture. They were describe as different from "us", from the Swedes. In this discourse the relationship with the so called different children’s families were described as a very important part of the preschools work with culture, but the relationship with the children of the interpreted Swedish families was not described to be as important. To work with what the preschool teachers described as a Swedish culture was also very important so that the different children would be able to be a part of the group, the swedes. Finally, I looked at how these two discourses relate to other discourses within the school system that I have seen in other scientific studies. When doing so, I saw both similarities and differences from other discourses. The way to describe some children to be different from others, different from "us" was one similarity, but the aim to plan the pre-schools work around the children’s individual interests was for example different from the other discourses.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine some pre-school teacher's and parent's perceptions about communication within the pre-school context and how this can be described in terms of conceptual dichotomy. The empirical investigation consists of a qualitative study, where data have been collected by interviewing two focus groups and one single parent. The main theoretical tools which the study uses as its premiss is Derridas' theory of hospitality and Habermas' theory of deliberative dialogues. The study also considers the conception of the intermediate domain as an arena for communication between parents and pre-school teachers, and further more the conception of stereotyping in social and cultural contexts. In order to explore these processes I have used the qualitative method of interpretation; Hermeneutic, also with a narrative approach to the analysis. The results and the analysis of the data show that the interviewed parent and pre-school teachers have a poor sense of knowing how much influence to give to each other. The parents were not satisfied with the level of open communication and how the pre-school teachers share information of the activities.

<p>Teaching in pre-school usually takes its starting-point in children’s reality and curiosity. Apart from that it has also been important to take contains of a special subject under consideration, for example development of language and communication or mathematics development. The purpose of this study was to investigate how natural science as a special subject in pre-school education is expressed by five trainee teachers when they teach children at the age of 2-7. Generally the study focuses on the students’ teaching actions as well as their line of argument about their teaching and the choices they have to make. More specific the study focuses on the goal and important perspectives in young children’s natural science education, from the students’ point of view. Observations and interviews were carried through during the students’ last period of practical training in five different pre-schools. Natural science as a subject was predetermined but the students were free to choose any contain within the subject. The study is inspired by hermeneutic research, mainly in the procedure of analyzing the students’ expressions and statements.</p><p>The results show that the trainee teachers have different goals with their science teaching. The purposes for individual learning focus on the subject, the individual child and/or the society in a more wide perspective. The students also have purposes for the pre-school activity which they express as taking the starting point in children’s experiences, interest, specific conditions and letting the children have fun during learning. The two perspectives “The Child or the Subject” became of special interest. The trainee teachers made their teaching choices from the child’s point of view and also from the natural science subject. These perspectives were used in a mix by the students, and even if their first focus was at the subject they immediately took the child’s interest under consideration.</p> / <p>Undervisning i förskolan utgår av tradition från barnens verklighet och nyfikenhet. Under de senare åren har undervisningen också kommit att fokusera på innehållet. Syftet med föreliggande kvalitativa studie var att undersöka hur naturvetenskap i ett didaktiskt perspektiv kommer till uttryck när fem lärarstudenter undervisar barn i åldrar 2-7 år, och efteråt resonerar kring undervisningen. Intressant var vilka mål de hade samt vilka perspektiv som blev viktiga att utgå ifrån i undervisningen. Observationer och intervjuer genomfördes under studenternas sista verksamhetsförlagda utbildning (termin 7), då de undervisade kring något eget valt naturvetenskapligt innehåll. Deltagarna har alla läst inriktningen ”lärande i tidiga åldrar” och får behörighet att undervisa barn i förskolan och grundskolans första år. Studien är inspirerad av den hermeneutiska forskningsansatsen, och genom ett analysförfarande som bygger på tolkning av deltagarnas uttryck och utsagor har skilda mål och perspektivval vuxit fram ur datamaterialet.</p><p>Resultatet visar att de val deltagarna gör kan vara riktade mot individuella lärandemål utifrån tre perspektiv. Målen kan vara ämnesfokuserade, individfokuserade eller samhällsfokuserade. Valen kan också vara riktade mot mål för verksamheten och då innebära att det måste vara roligt, undervisningen måste utgå från barnets intresse och förutsättningar samt från barns erfarenheter. Även om verksamhetsmålen verkar samstämmiga har de ibland skilda innebörder för studenterna. Det är tydligt att lärarstudenternas undervisning utgår både från barnet och från ämnet. Resultatet belyser hur lärarstudenterna förutom de naturvetenskapliga målen också har mål som är mer allmänna, till exempel tematiskt, ämnesövergripande och värdemål som att vänta på sin tur och att visa hänsyn. I studien kallas detta för ämnesdidaktisk respektive allmändidaktisk preferens. Resultatet visar inte på preferenser som kan knytas till personer. Det visar sig att även om ämnet ibland har första preferens så tas det direkt hänsyn till de individer som skall undervisas. Det förekommer inte vid något tillfälle att studenterna både planerat och genomfört utan att ta hänsyn till de barn eller den barngrupp de undervisar.</p><p>I diskussionen belyses bland annat resultatet ur ett styrdokumentsperspektiv samt vilka konsekvenser resultatet kan få för lärarutbildningen.</p>

The purpose of this study was to discover what nursery teachers thought about an introduction of English to Swedish nursery schools, whether they had seen children showing an interest for the English language and if so how they had reacted. Theories and research used in the analysis of the results were amongst others the sociocultural theory of learning and the critical period hypothesis. Qualitative semi-structured interviews of four nursery school teachers was the method chosen. The results showed that the teachers felt that an introduction of English could be easily implemented if it were to be unofficial, fun and voluntary and not by force through an addition to the curriculum. The teachers felt that it was currently not part of their job as it was not included in the curriculum. The teachers thought the children could have positive outcomes in their English language development if introduced to English in nursery school. The teachers thought that the main hindrances in introducing English would be due to staff competence in the English language and a possible problem in children’s Swedish language development, mainly in children learning Swedish as a second language. The teachers had seen various instances where children had expressed an interest in the English language, for example in role-play, at mealtimes and at song time. They had acknowledged this interest by asking to hear the children use English, translating English words into Swedish and by expanding the amount of English used in the children’s day to day life at nursery school.

The overall point of the study is to describe and understand the endeavours of the pre-school teachers’ trade union to establish professionalism within this field of work, from the end of the 1960s to 2005. In order to shed light on the subject the main questions asked and answered in this study were: How does the pre-school teachers’ trade union act on issues regarding the autonomy of the pre-school teaching profession? To what extent, and in what way, does the pre-school teachers’ trade union strengthen the pre-school teaching profession’s position by differentiating itself from, and/or allying itself with other professional groups? Which knowledge base is the pre-school teachers’ trade union trying to establish and how does the union act on issues concerning the pre-school teaching profession’s knowledge base? How can these endeavours be understood from a gender perspective? The study presents profession and gender theoretical perspectives. It is based on an analysis of trade-union and official documents concerning pre-school, such as government enquiries, general guidelines and formal instructions. The analysis shows that state regulation of pre-school and its teachers has increased over the 45-year period in question. The result of this has been clearer directives but, at the same time, a loss of professional autonomy. The pre-school teachers’ trade unions’ endeavours to establish a professional monopoly through attempting to differentiate the profession by excluding people without a university degree, has been unsuccessful despite exclusion strategies aimed at nursery nurses. A clear effort can be seen to build an alliance with the teachers in compulsory schools. Aside from extending the pre-school teachers’ university training to 3.5 years, it is also evident that the move from care and developmental psychology to pedagogy and learning has been effected through the alliance with the compulsory school teachers. From a gender perspective, the context of pre-school teaching can be seen to have changed symbolically from one primarily intended to provide care and monitor children to a more pedagogical institution. Pre-school teachers have become teachers and children’s learning is emphasised more than their development. Overall this means that the pre-school teachers have a new identity and that pre-school teaching is no longer so clearly a woman’s job.