<p>Stress har alltid förekommit hos våra förfäder då var det en instinkt på kamp eller flykt. Men i dag utsätts vi för stress i olika former. Positiv stress är bra för oss, det ger oss energi då vi ställs inför utmaningar som vi klarar av. Negativ stress uppstår när vi ställs inför höga påfrestningar och kontrollen går förlorad. Stressen kan ha en negativ inverkan både fysiskt och psykiskt. Det gäller att hitta en balans mellan den negativa och positiva stressen för att hälsan ska vara god. Men tyvärr tycks den negativa stressen öka i samhället. Detta kan drabba både vuxna och barn på olika sätt. Arbetet kommer att belysa den negativa stressen samt det förebyggande arbetet mot negativ stress på förskolan.</p><p>Det övergripande syftet med detta examensarbete var att undersöka fem förskollärares uppfattningar om barn och stress på förskolan. Dessa frågeområden har varit centrala i vår studie. Vad orsakar stress hos förskolebarn? Hur arbetar förskollärare för att undvika att barn blir stressade?</p><p>Vi valde kvalitativa intervjuer som metod därför det kunde bidra till en nyanserad bild av förskollärarnas uppfattningar angående barn och stress på förskolan. Intervjuerna utfördes på två olika förskolor med både kvinnliga och manliga förskollärare. Resultaten i studien visade att flertalet av förskollärarna upplevde stress på sitt arbete. Studien visade  att stress kunde förekomma i olika former hos barnen och hos personalen i verksamheten. Det framkom också att det fanns många olika omständigheter som kan skapa stress i förskolans verksamhet. Resultaten i studien visade på informanternas uppfattningar kring det betydelsefulla arbetet att förebygga stress på förskolan. </p>

Stress har alltid förekommit hos våra förfäder då var det en instinkt på kamp eller flykt. Men i dag utsätts vi för stress i olika former. Positiv stress är bra för oss, det ger oss energi då vi ställs inför utmaningar som vi klarar av. Negativ stress uppstår när vi ställs inför höga påfrestningar och kontrollen går förlorad. Stressen kan ha en negativ inverkan både fysiskt och psykiskt. Det gäller att hitta en balans mellan den negativa och positiva stressen för att hälsan ska vara god. Men tyvärr tycks den negativa stressen öka i samhället. Detta kan drabba både vuxna och barn på olika sätt. Arbetet kommer att belysa den negativa stressen samt det förebyggande arbetet mot negativ stress på förskolan. Det övergripande syftet med detta examensarbete var att undersöka fem förskollärares uppfattningar om barn och stress på förskolan. Dessa frågeområden har varit centrala i vår studie. Vad orsakar stress hos förskolebarn? Hur arbetar förskollärare för att undvika att barn blir stressade? Vi valde kvalitativa intervjuer som metod därför det kunde bidra till en nyanserad bild av förskollärarnas uppfattningar angående barn och stress på förskolan. Intervjuerna utfördes på två olika förskolor med både kvinnliga och manliga förskollärare. Resultaten i studien visade att flertalet av förskollärarna upplevde stress på sitt arbete. Studien visade  att stress kunde förekomma i olika former hos barnen och hos personalen i verksamheten. Det framkom också att det fanns många olika omständigheter som kan skapa stress i förskolans verksamhet. Resultaten i studien visade på informanternas uppfattningar kring det betydelsefulla arbetet att förebygga stress på förskolan.

Kommunala förskolan förutsättningarna har förändrats i och med införandet av nya styrformer som brukar sammanfattas under namnet New Public Management. Kraven på de anställda har ökat liksom stress och arbetsrelaterad psykisk ohälsa. Arbetspsykologiska stressmodeller förklarar stress utifrån olika antaganden om obalanser mellan t.ex. krav och resurser eller krav och kontroll. Den här studien syftade till att undersöka konkreta upplevelser av arbetsstress hos förskollärare i den kommunala förskolan. Deltagare var 8 kvinnliga förskollärare från en kommun som utifrån en Critical Incident Technique inspirerad intervjuguide djupintervjuades. Databearbetning genom kvalitativ innehållsanalys identifierade tre teman: förändrade förutsättningar i förskolan, underbemanning och arbete med människor. Resultaten visar att förskollärarnas stress är förknippad med upplevelsen av obalans mellan arbetskrav och otillräckliga resurser. Denna balans mellan krav och resurser beskrivs med hjälp av The JDR Model som innebär att stress uppstår när kraven är för höga i relation till de resurser som finns att tillgå.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to revise the Lunch Box Program using the Intervention Mapping process to design a program for parents of preschool age children in the childcare setting. Program development was guided by input from group interviews (n = 3) that were held with parents (n = 31) at three child care centers. Four major themes were revealed 1) interest in receiving information in written format; 2) activities that stimulate parent interaction; 3) workshops and activity stations; and 4) recommendations for support from local supermarkets. Lunch Is In The Bag emphasizes packing fruits, vegetables and whole grains in lunch daily. In a quasi-experimental design, six childcare centers were paired by size before being randomly assigned to intervention (n=3) and comparison (n=3) groups. The parents with primary lunch packing responsibility for the three to five year old children were enrolled as parent-child dyads. Primary outcome measures included lunch contents of fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Secondary outcome measures included change in behavioral constructs and process outcome measures included fit of program into operations and curriculum. A total of 132 parent-child dyads completed the study, 81 in the intervention group and 51 in the comparison group. Direct observation of children’s lunches from the intervention group showed a significant increase in predicted mean number of servings of vegetables, from 0.41 to 0.65 (P < 0.001) and whole grains, from 0.54 to 1.06 (P < 0.001), but not fruit. The intervention demonstrated a significant effect on knowledge of meal patterns (p = 0.010); outcome expectations for packing whole grains (p < 0.001); and subjective norms for packing fruit (p = 0.002), vegetables (p = 0.046), and whole grains (p = 0.015). Perceived behavioral control (p = 0.000), expectations (p = 0.007), and intentions (p = 0.048) were significant independent predictors for packing vegetables. Knowledge significantly predicted packing whole grains (p = 0.000). Process outcome data indicated Lunch is in the Bag was a feasible nutrition education program that fit well into both the childcare center operations and curriculum. / text

Playing is a common part of children’s leisure time, and with children spending an increasing amount of this time in school-age childcare, in both Sweden and England, staff have the responsibility to facilitate play. The way play is conceptualised by staff may lead to different aspects of play being facilitated. These play practices are enabled and constrained by the arrangements of what this dissertation calls the school’s play practice architecture, i.e. where play practices are intertwined with a school’s practice architecture. The aim of the research was to explore how staff talked about play and how to facilitate it, how concepts of play contributed to different play practices and how it might be possible to transform play practice architectures. The research draws on conversations with staff in school-age childcare settings in two Swedish and one English school during an action research project. Just as action research was used to disturb and change practice in order to understand it, concepts from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy (1980/2004) were put to work to disturb taken-for-granted concepts of play in order to explore how play works. Article I explores what the staff talked about in relation to play and its facilitation. The conclusion is that the ability of staff to interpret children’s play as children exploring their agency is crucial when facilitating play in a learning institution. Article II examines some discursive orders about play in school-age childcare and goes beyond them by conceptualising playing as becoming-different. The article argues that when foregrounding play, staff recognised children and themselves as becoming-players. Article III investigates how to think practice as constant change. For any practice, planning is required, and yet the unexpected keeps happening. When playing was conceptualised as a “What If? As If” approach, which allowed for potentialities to become actualised, then this approach was also useful as an approach in practice. The analysis suggests that when engaging in a playing practice, practitioners develop new knowledge and simultaneously change social situations. The practice of playing, whether intentional or unintentional, can not only disturb but also transform play practice architectures. The practice of playing is sensitised to the disturbances caused by playing and also puts itself “in play”. This opens up for a continuous de- and reterritorialisation of play and playing in school-age childcare practice.

<p>This study uses the data from the National Institute for Children Health and Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development to evaluate features of wage and childcare price changes that are associated with positive effects on children's early cognitive skills. Identifying beneficial characteristics of changes in market variables is especially relevant in a policy environment where the main priority of tax incentives related to the use of childcare is not facilitating the formation of children's cognitive skills, but reducing reliance on the welfare system through increase in employment among poor households. </p><p>We estimate jointly the discrete household choices related to the employment status of the mother and the use of a paid care mode, the demand functions for quantity and quality of childcare, the production function for cognitive outcomes, the wage process for the mother, and childcare price equations based on the hedonic pricing method, while at the same time introducing unobserved heterogeneity in the disturbance terms of the estimated outcomes. Our strategy for handling selection problems also utilizes the exogenous variation in childcare prices across the 10 geographical markets defined by the study sites in the NICHD SECCYD dataset, which in our model influence choices, but do not affect cognitive outcomes directly.</p><p>Our results show that failing to account for common unobserved characteristics would lead to underestimating the impact of all analyzed wage and price changes. We find that prices and wages do not have a statistically significant impact on the quality of paid care, while the marginal product of that attribute of care is positive for almost all input combinations in the production of cognitive attainment. Therefore, a policy utilizing changes in wages and prices can be effective in improving early cognitive skill only through the impact of those changes on the intensity of paid care use. </p><p>The comparison of the effects of wage and price changes on early cognitive skills for three sets of values of the observable household characteristics representing low, middle and high income households lead to the following conclusions: (1) a tax credit for working mothers and childcare subsidies for center-based care can bring disproportionate gains for children in low and middle income groups; (2) subsidizing paid home care for children less than three and a half years old can be more effective than subsidizing center-based care for the same age group in terms of improving cognitive outcomes at the age of five; (3) conditioning childcare assistance for paid care on the employment status of the mother does not seem to have a strong negative effect on early skill formation; and (4) tax incentives affecting wage rates and childcare prices prove to be beneficial for the formation of early cognitive skills only when they are implemented while the child is less than three and a half years old.</p> / Dissertation

This surveys purpose is to find out how educators work with science and technology in preschool, what effects occur if the teaching does not take place and if there’s any difference with the science and technology class in preschool depending on what education the staff has. Four preschool teachers and three childcare workers in six preschools in a small municipality has been interviewed by qualitative interviews. The result shows that the interviewed used activities, experiments, theme work and the free game to teach the children science and technology. Biology is the topic in science that is being worked the most with. Lack of knowledge, interest, time and staff are factors that are seen as obstacles to the work of science and technology. My conclusion is that all educators working with science and technology in preschool but in different ways. One can see the difference between childcare workers and preschool teachers because of their knowledge of the subject. More knowledge results in better teaching.

Family day care providers operate at the interface of the private and the public. They are self-employed and work at home, yet their 'suitability' to provide childcare is scrutinised by officials and rules and regulations operating on different levels which can restrict their business opportunities. Family day care takes place in a particular cultural context concerning ideas of childrearing and against the backdrop of other childcare and educational provision. The focus of the thesis is the family day care provider, one of the members in the childcare triangle of child, parents and childcare worker. Previous research was mainly interested in the quality of childcare provided and parents' satisfaction. Here working conditions, such as hours worked, workload, income are examined, as are career prospects. Who are the women who become family day care providers and how do they see their future? The daily routines of family day care providers are examined and possible detenninants investigated. However, perceived needs of children may differ from demands arising out of parents' reason for using this kind of childcare service. Family day care providers accounts are examined in order to identify the various aspects of childcare arrangements and how to develop relationships that promote successful arrangements. Since family day care takes place in the home other family members are part of the setting and are affected by their mother's or wife's work. At the same time their contribution to the work of a family day care provider has to be included in the investigation ofthe working conditions. The comparison of family day care providers living in two different locations, four local authorities in the Northeast of England and one town in the Northeast of Germany allows the influence of family and childcare policies and the impact of cultural perceptions of good childrearing practices to be traced. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was employed. Apart from new insights into the actual working conditions of family day care providers, a better understanding of the intended and unintended effects of policies regulating family day care has been gained. The findings contribute to the debate on paid and unpaid work, and paid and unpaid care, as well as to the debate over equal opportunities, showing a more complicated relationship than just a gendered division.

The purpose of the study was to investigate children's participation in child welfare investigations. Six interviews were conducted with social workers who are active in child welfare investigations, to understand social workers experiences of children's involvement in investigations. The results show that children are not always involved or as involved as they should, for different reasons. The child's age, the child's ability to communicate, the child's attitude to cooperation, the guardian's attitude to cooperation, social workers prerequisites in terms of skills, tools and workload. Furthermore, the results show that children's best and social issues need to weigh heavier in child welfare investigations, as today there is a lot of focus on parents and guardians. This study aims to contribute knowledge of children's participation in child welfare research.