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Studiens syfte är att undersöka förskollärares förhållningssätt till den estetiska uttrycksformen drama, samt synliggöra förskollärares upplevelser av drama i undervisningen. Studien tillämpar en kvalitativ ansats med semistrukturerade intervjuer som datainsamlingsmetod. Analysen bygger på det sociokulturella perspektivet. I resultatet framkommer att förskollärare har ett positivt förhållningssätt relaterat till drama i deras undervisning. Drama anses stimulera barns utveckling och lärande i en positiv riktning. Trots det poängterar förskollärarna flera utmaningar i arbetet med drama och det finns skillnader i hur lärande begreppet relateras till deras dramaundervisning. Återkommande dramastrategier som förskollärarna använder i sin undervisning är; dramatisera med karaktärer och drama genom gestaltning. Studiens slutsats är att drama är ett brett begrepp med en komplex innebörd. Förskollärarna är positivt inställda till drama, men deras egen kunskap om ämnet påverkar hur de väljer att arbeta med drama. Det finns skillnader i hur lärande begreppet beskrivs utifrån ett arbete med drama.

The aim of this study was to examine how preschool teachers use music in their everyday work with children and their view of music as a way to enhance specific skills. Data was collected from two different preschools. The material was analyzed from a sociocultural perspective with focus on scaffolding. The results of this study points out that music is seen as a tool that can support and help children develop academic and social skills. The results also shows that preschool teachers thinks that music can be seen as communication which stimulates to interaction.

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The purpose of this study has been to discover print awareness of kindergarten children in Taiwan and the evidence that they are constructing knowledge about written Chinese. The study utilized Print Awareness Tasks including twenty environmental print items chosen from the Taiwanese society. Sixteen kindergartners age from three to six were the informants. These children were asked to read and respond to environmental print items with a different degree of decontextualization in each of the two task sessions. The results of the study showed that kindergarten children in Taiwan are highly aware of print in their environment. These young children demonstrated high semantic intent when they read environmental print. They used various information sources available to them, which include contextual clues in the print setting and their personal experience and background knowledge. They also showed that they used their developing concepts about the Chinese writing system as linguistic strategies to help them read the print items. There were differences between the responses to the two task sessions in terms of semantic and pragmatic characteristics and use of information. The contextual clues appeared to play a significant role in reading of environmental print. There were also differences between age groups. Three and six year olds differed from other age groups in terms of the semantic and pragmatic characteristic of their responses and their use of information. The children demonstrated that they were developing important concepts about the Chinese writing system. They were hypothesizing the representational relationships in language between: (a) written representation and the object it represents; (b) written representation and oral utterance--character-syllable correspondence; and (c) segmentation in written representation--language units. Most of the children had developed the concept of character as a written segment and word as a semantic segment. Very few of them had concept of the radical. They appeared read in a holistic way. The older children tended to develop concepts which were more specific and were closer to the conventions; however, no fixed linear developmental progress by age is suggested by the data.

The present study was a systematic investigation of hierarchical skill sequences in the beginning reading domain. The hierarchies included skills from the traditional approach to reading which reflect bottom-up processing and skills from the conceptual area of print awareness which reflect top-down processing. Researchers supporting the bottom-up approach view reading as a process in which the child extracts information from the text to gain knowledge of the print. The bottom-up processes examined were in the areas of letter recognition and letter naming, and identification of letter sounds and phonemes. The top-down processing approach views reading as a task in which the child brings his/her past experiences and knowledge about the world to gain information about print. The top-down processes examined were in the areas of print identification, inferring a word in context, and print directionality rules. Hierarchical skill sequences were developed within each of the specific areas reflecting the top-down and bottom-up processing theories. Items were developed to reflect the skill sequences based on the cognitive processes that are necessary for correct performance. This involved varying the task demands imposing various requirements of cognitive processing. The data were from 13,189 Head Start children ranging from 3 to 6 years of age. Latent trait models were constructed to reflect the viii ix hypothesized skill sequences by allowing the aj (discrimination) and bj (difficulty) parameters to be free to vary or by constraining them to be equal to other parameters. To arrive at a preferred model, each latent trait model that represented a hypothesized skill sequence was statistically compared against alternative latent trait models. The results from the present investigation supported the hierarchical skill sequences reflecting skills within the traditional area of reading. However, some of the skill sequences from the conceptual area of print awareness were not clearly supported. While the results provide a deeper understanding of beginning reading skill sequences reflecting top-down and bottom-up processing theories, future research is needed to delineate the specific skills which promote later reading ability once the child is in formal reading instruction.

The aim of this study is to research how pedagogues in the American preschool work with girls and boys from a gender perspective. The research questions that are central in the study include how the pedagogues treat the children, how they form the pedagogical environment and if they bear a gender perspective in mind when planning activities. The method that is used in the study is qualitative through interviews. In the result the pedagogues state that they use the same phrases towards girls and boys, that all their toys and other materials are for both sexes and that they work towards getting the children to play in the same areas of the classroom. Although, the examples from the pedagogues show that they do make differences towards girls and boys in wordings and tone of voice, generalizations depending on sex and over-acknowledged transgendered behaviors. The conclusion of the study is that the pedagogues believe that they are creating a gender equal environment for girls and boys but the fact is that they make differences towards them. This creates an environment where gender norms are maintained.