The purpose of this study is to examine discourses about norms and norm criticism regarding sex/gender and sexuality in preschool teachers’ and nursery nurses’ speech using a post-structuralist perspective. My two research questions are: How do the educators describe norms in general and norms about sex/gender and sexuality in relation to their work? How do the educators describe their work with norm criticism in relation to norms about sex/gender and sexuality? The theoretical base of this thesis is feminist post-structuralism and queer theory. Qualitative interviews were used as method to gather material and then a form of discourse analysis was made based on the transcribed interviews. Five preschool teachers and one nursery nurse participated in this study. Four of these educators work in two different open preschools, which are lgbtq-certified by RFSL, The Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights, and two educators work in a preschool that explicitly say that they work with a norm criticism perspective. In this study I found that the main discourses about norms were that they can be both positive and negative, but controlling and often invisible. Norms concerning sex/gender and sexuality were mainly described as limiting and narrow. The main discourses found about norm criticism were that it is a work without specific methods but that there are still norms concerning it. That norm criticism is about broadening the meanings of different norms and also, that how teachers talk and respond to children and parents affects them and how they understand and create themselves and others. The conclusions are that many discourses contradict each other in ways that are necessary. That the discourses mainly focused on educator’s and adult’s impact on children, and that norms which are perceived by the educators as dominant in society affect the educators discourses.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-26473 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Degerman, Marielle |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Lärarutbildningen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds