«Ei linerle vet at hun er ei linerle» – En kvalitativ studie av små barns «well-being» i barnehagen

The aim of this study is to contribute knowledge about the well-being of children under the age of 3 years in Norwegian ECEC centres (barnehager). The study focuses specifically on traditionally organised ECEC centres and flexibly organised ECEC centres (basebarnehager). The research questions are: What characterises everyday life for the youngest children, and to what extent are children under the age of 3 years able to experience quality of life and well-being in different group types at the ECEC centre? Are the children being met as irreplaceable participants in a community of children?

Overall, the authors conclude that the structural and physical frameworks of the ECEC centre can make it difficult for the staff to create continuity, reciprocity and the possibility to develop stable and close relationships with young children. According to the authors, this seems to be particularly evident in large, flexible ECEC centres.

The study shows great differences between the traditional and the flexible ECEC centres, among other things with regard to access to toys and various rooms for the youngest children. In the large, flexible centres, doors to specially designed rooms and outdoor spaces were often locked to protect the children's safety, whereas children in the traditional centres more or less had free access to all the rooms in the department. According to the authors, the staff in the flexible ECEC centres had to incorporate wholes and efficiency in their activities, and this requires good coordination and logistics. The analysis shows that the outdoor framework of the flexible ECEC centres and their challenging logistics and inaccessible equipment restricted the children's possibilities to choose where in the centre they wanted to be, who they wanted to be with or what they wanted to do. The authors therefore conclude that the organisation of the ECEC centre had a major impact on the children's everyday life.

However, the authors only find small differences between the traditionally organised ECEC centres and the flexibly organised ECEC centres in terms of attentiveness and interaction between the children and between the children and staff. Overall, and regardless of the form of organisation, the authors find that the staff very much care for and pay attention to individual children and core groups/groups categorised by age. However, the analysis shows that group size and stability in the groups of children could impact the staff's interaction with the children. The authors find that it is easier to establish stable and close relationships between adults and children in small groups, which are not affected by changes in staff composition. The larger the group of children, the greater the risk that the staff will adopt a monitoring role and be more hesitant rather than taking clear charge of the entire group of children. According to the authors, the collective and group community seems to be less pronounced in the large groups of children (i.e. groups with more than 14 children) than in the small, stable groups. Staff in the large groups have more focus on the individual child than on the group as a whole.

Using a micro-ethnographic design, the study is based on team research, in which four researchers together conducted 245 hours of field work in six municipal and private ECEC centres. Three of the centres were traditionally organised and divided into departments, whereas the other three centres were flexibly organised, i.e. basebarnehager which are large, open ECEC centres with specially designed rooms. The data material consists of observations and field notes, focusing on everyday routines, interaction patterns and activities in the different rooms of the ECEC centre. Moreover, the researchers focused on the events, places and artefacts the children dwelled upon and were interested in, and the relationships the children entered. The researchers also held informal conversations and interviews with the ECEC staff as well as focus conversations with selected parents. Erik Allardt's theoretical perspectives on well-being and analytical concepts of "having", "loving" and "being" form the basis for the analysis of the overall data material.

Eide, B. J., Winger, N., Wolf, K. D., & Dahle, H. F. (2017). «Ei linerle vet at hun er ei linerle» – En kvalitativ studie av små barns «well-being» i barnehagen. Barn, 2017 (1), 23-40.