Like school and not like school: ambivalences in Swedish preschool teachers’ enacted policy.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Swedish kindergarten teachers relate to the tension that exists between the subject syllabus and a child-centred curriculum in Swedish kindergarten policy.

The results show that the local debate in kindergartens favours children's needs, but conflicts can also arise here. Changes in national curricula affect what kindergarten teachers say. The interviews show that kindergarten policy can seem complicated, and this leads to discussions about what kindergarten should actually be and how it should relate to school.

Ten Swedish kindergarten teachers from different kindergartens participated in semi-structured interviews, where they talked about their specific sociogeographical environments (approximately 50 minutes each). The kindergarten teachers were selected through invitations sent to seven different kindergartens, which were selected on the basis of differences/representativeness in economic and cultural capital.

Liljestrand, J. (2021). “Like school and not like school: ambivalences in Swedish preschool teachers’ enacted policy”. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 7(1):44-52.