The aim of the study is to provide knowledge about how children explore, understand and reason about the physical phenomenon of friction. This study have been based on the younger children’s exploring. The method of the study has been observation in order to get as close to the environment that’s being investigated and to bring attention to the younger children’s actions. A nonparticipating observation was also used for the observer to influence the children as little as possible. The observations that have been made have taken place over two days and have been video recorded to ensure documentation of children's reasoning, body language and actions. The result shows how the children focused on overcoming the friction to get an object to slide instead of getting stuck. The participants’ interaction also emerged in the result as central to driving the exploration further. The conclusions drawn after the study is that the result can be linked to the preschool’s curriculum, which addresses the fact that the children should be given the opportunity to explore, discuss and develop understanding of physical phenomena. The study has also highlighted that hills can be used as a tool for teaching and exploring the phenomenon of friction.

Syftet med denna undersökning är att undersöka vad pedagoger har för tankar om hur och vart de arbetar med fysik i förskolan. Undersökningen handlar både om vad pedagoger har för syn på fysik och hur de upplever att det är att arbeta med det i förskolan. Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer och denna metod användes för att ge utrymme till att ställa följdfrågor under intervjuerna. Åtta pedagoger deltog i undersökningen. I resultatet framkommer bland annat att fysik är ett ämne som flera av pedagogerna upplever som svårt. Majoriteten av pedagogerna arbetar helst med lärarstyrda experiment och detta sker mestadels inomhus. Anledning till att de vill styra upp arbetet med fysik är att de då har möjlighet att i förväg förbereda experimenten. Sju av åtta pedagoger anser sig behöva vidareutbildning för att bli mer medvetna om vad fysik är och hur de kan jobba med det. / The aim of this study is to investigate pedagogues thoughts of how and where they work with physics in pre-school. The study is about pedagogues’ views of physics and also about their experiences working with it in pre-school. The study was conducted using qualitative semi structured interviews and this method was used to provide room to ask follow-up questions during the interviews. Eight pedagogues participated in the study. The result shows that physics, among other things, is a subject that several pedagogues find difficult. The majority of the pedagogues prefer to work with teacher-controlled experiments and most of the time this takes place indoors. The reason why they want to control the work with physics is because they then have time to prepare the experiments in advance. Seven of eight pedagogues believe they need further education to become more aware of what physics is and how they can work with it.

Abstract The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge about working with physics in preschool, and how the youngest children perceive natural science phenomena, and to make visible how educators work with the subject of physics. Our focus is forces, and we therefore designed and allowed the children and educators to conduct experiments on, gravity, static electricity and magnetism. The study involved 19 children, aged 1 to 3 and 5 educators.  The data collection method for this study consists of observations of the children when they experiment, as well as semi-structured with the educators. We used video recording when conducting the experiments and voice-recording when interviewing the educators. The interviews used a phenomengraphic methodological approch in order to capture preschool teachers different experiences of physics.  The youngest children expressed themselves with body movements, mimicry and the older children also expressed hypotheses and reasoning. The results of the interviews show that educators to a large extent feel unsafe when it comes to science in preschool. Unsure about how and what to say, and how to perform spontaneous physics aktivities, and unsure what level is appropriate for the younger children.

The aim of this study was to investigate seven in-service preschool teachers’ conception of their competence in physics, needs in further educational training and their perceptions around conditions surrounding physics education in preschool. The study is based on a phenomenographic approach where individual interviews have been conducted.The study shows that most of the preschool teachers feels that physics is difficult and something they are struggling with, both when it comes to teaching and understanding the subject themselves. Everyone in the study does not share these thoughts. The conception that also appears is that they do have good knowledge in the subject but not in teaching it. Most of the teachers are open minded in their needs of professional development. They express that they want education in the form of workshops, that both has a basic theoretical and practical approach. A minority feels that they can seek further development themselves through various types of literature. The study shows that there are many aspects of underlying conditions for why they do not teach preschoolers in physics. Perception that stands out are time-economic circumstances, their lack of knowledge in physics, lack of interest in the subject and arguments that indicate that they also use the preschoolers’ lack of interest as a defending argument. / Syftet med studien är att undersöka sju verksamma förskollärares uppfattningar kring deras egen kompetens, behov av fortbildning och deras uppfattningar kring förutsättningar för fysikundervisning i förskolan. Studien grundar sig på fenomenografisk teori och metodologi och semistrukturerade intervjuer har använts som datainsamlingsmetod.Studien visar att majoriteten av förskollärarna uppfattar sina kunskaper i fysik som mindre bra och upplever fysikämnet som svårt. De få som anser sig ha goda kunskaper i fysik uttrycker trots goda kunskaper i ämnet osäkerhet kring hur de ska undervisa i fysik. Studien visar att förskollärarna i allmänhet känner att de behöver kompetensutveckling framförallt i hur de ska undervisa i fysik i förskolan. Majoriteten av förskollärarna i studien vill ha fortbildning i form av workshops eller föreläsningar som har både teoretiska och praktiska inslag. Förskollärarnas uppfattningar om förutsättningar för fysik i förskolan visar på en mängd hinder för utvecklande av fysikundervisningen. De lyfter speciellt det tidsekonomiska begränsningar som finns, bristande kunskaper i fysik, bristande intresse i fysik och använder också barnens intressen som starkt argument till att de inte arbetar med fysik i förskolan.