The aim of this study is, from a norm-critical approach, to find, investigate and analyse human representation in the visual culture of one preschool in order to understand if the children enrolled are represented or not. The research questions are: In what ways is there imagery of human representations in images and materials designed for play? What skin-colors and origins are dominant in the data collected? We carried out a qualitative study in the form of visual ethnography. This method allowed us to use a combination of different data collection tools such as photography and ethnographic field notes to collect our data. The photographs we took of images and material used for play, was then analysed through semiotic picture analysis. The focus was to see which skin-color and origin that was dominant in the photographs of human representations. The result of the study, show that human representation is found in many variations such as, books, board games, puzzles and materials for educational use. The study also show that the vast majority of representations, displayed people of white skin and Swedish origin. In discussing these results we argued that the selected preschool is imbued by the norm of whiteness that is also dominant in the Swedish society. From a postcolonial perspective, we find that this norm and its underlying assumption of racial differences forms part of a historically rooted structural system of values that has evolved in Sweden during hundreds of years. The impact these results have in a preschool context is that children don’t have the same opportunity to identification through the visual culture at the preschool. We conclude that this can, in the long run, create problems since representation or lack of representation is linked to marginalization of whole social groups due to not having the same requisites to take on for example positions of power. We have a strong believe that if the topic of human representation can be enlightened in preschools and schools, teachers can work towards offering all children the same potential for positive identification in preschool.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-26044 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Berglund, Carolina, Linerstad, Alina |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Lärarutbildningen, 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 |
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