<p>Genom kvalitativa intervjuer med fem förskollärare och observationer av konstruktionsmaterial på förskolan har jag fått svar på mina frågeställningar. Mina frågeställningar handlar om vilka material förskolan har till tredimensionell konstruktionslek inomhus och om det arbetas medvetet med tredimensionell konstruktionslek. Syftet med studien är att undersöka förutsättningarna för tredimensionell konstruktionslek på förskolan.</p><p>Rapporten visar att tillgången till konstruktionsmaterial på förskolorna inte är särskilt varierad och inte tillräckligt stor. Enligt svaren på intervjuerna är den största orsaken bristen på tid för pedagogerna att vara delaktig i konstruktionsleken. Det saknades även tid att hålla ordning på konstruktionsmaterialet. Pedagogerna arbetar inte medvetet med konstruktionslek och upplever att de saknar tillräckliga kunskaper inom ämnet.</p><p>Utifrån gällande styrdokument är leken viktig för barns lärande. Barnen skall utveckla sin förmåga att bygga, skapa och konstruera med hjälp av olika material. Denna studie visar att för att uppfylla dessa krav bör lärare i förskolan få mera kunskaper om konstruktionslekens betydelse och hur man kan arbeta med den.</p> / <p>My purpose with this study is to investigate the preschools conditions of the three-dimensional construction play.</p><p>My questions are: what indoor material the preschool posses and the awareness of working with three-dimensional construction play.</p><p>The answers I got are based on the qualitative interviews with five preschoolteachers and also from doing observations of the preschools construction materials.</p><p>The report shows that the access to the construction materials are not that varied and not big enough. According to the answers from the interviews, is the main reason the preschoolteachers lack of time to participate in the construction play. They are also lacking time to maintain the order of the construction materials. The preschoolteachers don’t work consciously with the construction play and they feel that they don’t have adequate knowledge in this subject.</p><p>On the basis of current control documents are the children’s play important for their learning. The children shall develop the ability to build, create and construct with help from different materials. This study shows that to fulfil these demands, the preschoolteachers should get more knowledge about the meaning of the construction play and how to work with it.</p>

Genom kvalitativa intervjuer med fem förskollärare och observationer av konstruktionsmaterial på förskolan har jag fått svar på mina frågeställningar. Mina frågeställningar handlar om vilka material förskolan har till tredimensionell konstruktionslek inomhus och om det arbetas medvetet med tredimensionell konstruktionslek. Syftet med studien är att undersöka förutsättningarna för tredimensionell konstruktionslek på förskolan. Rapporten visar att tillgången till konstruktionsmaterial på förskolorna inte är särskilt varierad och inte tillräckligt stor. Enligt svaren på intervjuerna är den största orsaken bristen på tid för pedagogerna att vara delaktig i konstruktionsleken. Det saknades även tid att hålla ordning på konstruktionsmaterialet. Pedagogerna arbetar inte medvetet med konstruktionslek och upplever att de saknar tillräckliga kunskaper inom ämnet. Utifrån gällande styrdokument är leken viktig för barns lärande. Barnen skall utveckla sin förmåga att bygga, skapa och konstruera med hjälp av olika material. Denna studie visar att för att uppfylla dessa krav bör lärare i förskolan få mera kunskaper om konstruktionslekens betydelse och hur man kan arbeta med den. / My purpose with this study is to investigate the preschools conditions of the three-dimensional construction play. My questions are: what indoor material the preschool posses and the awareness of working with three-dimensional construction play. The answers I got are based on the qualitative interviews with five preschoolteachers and also from doing observations of the preschools construction materials. The report shows that the access to the construction materials are not that varied and not big enough. According to the answers from the interviews, is the main reason the preschoolteachers lack of time to participate in the construction play. They are also lacking time to maintain the order of the construction materials. The preschoolteachers don’t work consciously with the construction play and they feel that they don’t have adequate knowledge in this subject. On the basis of current control documents are the children’s play important for their learning. The children shall develop the ability to build, create and construct with help from different materials. This study shows that to fulfil these demands, the preschoolteachers should get more knowledge about the meaning of the construction play and how to work with it.

The purpose of the study is to contribute with knowledge about how children aged 4-5 years build in preschool, what attracts the play and what they use their designs to. While also looking at whether it differs something between girls and boys construction play. For the study, participant observation was selected as the method and observations have been conducted in the mornings and afternoons, after the children taken breakfast and snacks. Participant observation was chosen as the method because I wanted to be able to question the children things while I observed in order to get as broad picture as possible out of the construction play, but also to get a picture from the children's perspective. The results show that childrens construction play is a big part of the everyday life in preeschool, and is characterized by many different factors, such as fine motor abilities, concentration and of course much play between children. Children are not aware of how important the game is for the construction of their own experiences and learning, but see it as a fun activity they love to engage in because they think it's fun and that they are good at what they do. Differences emerge between boys and girls play and is most clear when the girls and boys play together.

This human factors research demonstrated the importance of instruction design on assembly performance and self-efficacy in young children. The mixed-method usability study evaluated the effect of gender, age, toy, and experience on assembly performance, frequency and duration of instruction looks, subjective evaluations, and usability problems. A total of twenty-four boys and girls, six- and nine-year-olds, assembled K'NEX, LEGO, BIONICLE, and Lincoln Log toys using the accompanying pictorial assembly instructions. Other research objectives included recommending key usability measures for instruction designers, developing a model of assembly self-efficacy, and evaluating traditional usability methods for use with children. Not surprisingly, quantitative results revealed that the older children assembled the toys more quickly and accurately with fewer usability problems. Six-year-old girls had the highest rate of mistakes. The nine-year-olds required fewer instruction looks of shorter duration than the six-year-olds. With few exceptions, toy comparisons were similar across subjective and objective measures. Thirty-two instruction design usability problems were described and illustrated and resulted in twenty-seven design recommendations. For example, more than half of the children omitted components added to the main assembly in the presence of a subassembly construction suggesting that the subassembly should be in a separate frame. Principal components analysis of all quantitative measures revealed four key components for the usability testing of pictorial assembly instructions: performance, satisfaction, difficulty, and previous experience. A qualitative analysis of the think-aloud data and observations, using Grounded Theory, produced a model of assembly self-efficacy from child users’ psychosocial and cognitive perspectives that affirmed the importance of user-centered instruction design. Girls exhibited lower self-efficacy and a greater tendency toward internal attributions, which was exacerbated by assembly of a boy-oriented toy. Six-year-old children were more affected by excess extraneous cognitive load and inaccurate information, such as color mismatches between the instructions and object. Adaptations of traditional usability methods and instruments were effective with children. They included video training for thinking aloud, visual-analog rating scales, and pictorial ranking instruments. A small head-mounted camera provided an economic means for gathering gross instruction encoding times and for better understanding the user's perspective. / Ph. D.