Hvordan skaper personalet i barnehagen vilkår for barns fellesskap og tilhørighet?

The purpose of the study is to investigate how kindergarten employees facilitate children’s opportunities to experience community, inclusion and belonging in kindergarten. The research question is: How do kindergarten staff facilitate children’s opportunity to experience community and belonging?

The results show that kindergarten staff often contribute to creating conditions for children’s community and belonging, both through planned and spontaneous activities. The analysis shows four ways in which such conditions are created: (1) in joint activities with a common starting point, (2) by making children or what children do interesting and attractive, (3) by encouraging children to include each other, and (4) by giving time to the inclusive communities that arise among children.

The study is part of a larger research project in which three kindergartens with a total of 100 children and 36 employees participated in the Norwegian part of the project. There were between three to seven employees with different professional backgrounds, and 18 to 24 children aged three to six years in each department. This study is limited to investigating one of the three Norwegian kindergartens that participated in the research project. The source data consist of video observations from the kindergarten where the researcher studied both random and planned activities that show interactions between children and employees. Some observations were selected for more in-depth analysis and transcription in order to identify different ways that kindergarten staff facilitated community and belonging for the children.

Fugelsnes, K. (2022). Hvordan skaper personalet i barnehagen vilkår for barns fellesskap og tilhørighet? Nordisk barnehageforskning, Special issue: Tilhørighet: Å skape fellesskap i barnehagen, 19(2), 71–87.