Purpose
This doctoral dissertation has two overall objectives; to explore what takes place in social interaction between ECEC practitioners and children in everyday activities such as mealtimes, and how educational practice is accomplished in the social interaction between practitioners and children.
Result
The analyses in the study show how very young children who have not yet developed a verbal language can participate actively in mealtimes. One example of this is when a 1½-year-old child lifts his mug towards the adult to show her that he wants some water. As the adult does not respond, the child takes off the lid of the mug. The lid falls down on the floor, and the child says something that sounds like "no". The child then looks at the adult and once again asks for water by lifting his mug up in the air with both hands. The adult now asks the child whether he wants water or milk by lifting the jug of water and a milk carton off the table.
Through multimodal communication, i.e. using gestures, looks and the drinking mug as a material instrument, the child is able to ask for water and thereby participate in the mealtime on his own terms.
The study also shows how everyday preschool activities are converted into problem-solving projects, and how local educational practices with a specific educational focus aimed at, for example social meal norms, language, physics and mathematics, are generated spontaneously in everyday interactions between ECEC practitioners and children. For example, the study shows how children's play on a seesaw can develop into a common problem-solving project, in which both children and adults focus on physical phenomena and through their bodies explore and learn about weight, force, balance and equilibrium. This is by the adult asking questions focusing on the fact that a problem has arisen. The adult says: "What do we do now?" and looks at the two children on the seesaw. Together they examine the problem by the adult asking the children questions, who then reflect and answer. During the children's further examination of the movements of the seesaw, the adult continuously comments on what happens and occasionally also gives instructions. In this way, the adult encourages the children to create their own hypotheses about what will happen.
Design
The empirical material consists of ten days of video recordings from three preschools, focusing on what takes place in the social interaction between a total of five practitioners (three förskollärare and two barnskötare) and children aged 1-5 years. The conversation analysis formed the basis for the analysis of the overall data material, meaning that parts of the recordings were transcribed and analysed in detail. In the analysis, the author categorised selected sequences focusing on nonverbal/multimodal interaction in mealtimes as well as question-answer sequences in everyday preschool activities such as playing and setting the tables.
References
Dalgren, S. (2017). Att göra pedagogisk praktik tillsammans: Socialt samspel i förskolans vardag. Doktorsavhandling. Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press.