How a template for documentation in Swedish preschool systematic quality work produces qualities

The article investigates how a documentation template for systematic quality development work in kindergartens functions as a producer of quality elements. 

The author bases their research on compromises related to the national curriculum for Swedish pre-schools. The study focuses on issues concerning how a national model can be adapted to local conditions, and kindergartens’ wishes for methods regarding quality work that are not too complicated to use. These issues create dilemmas in terms of how Swedish kindergarten teachers should perform and document quality work. Based on the idea that the documentation work produces quality criteria more than it represents the quality of kindergartens, and through a post-human perspective based on agential realism, this article shows how thematic work, care and education are transformed into quality elements.

The research question is: What kind of quality is created when one takes into account the fact that templates have agency and that the documentation of quality produces, rather than represents, assumptions about quality in kindergarten?

The researchers argue that the topics that arise in the quality work create a risk of a dichotomy being created between teaching and care in kindergarten. The consequence of this is that care work is devalued in comparison with teaching work.

The article concludes that when kindergarten quality is something that is produced, rather than something that is reviewed and assessed, the documentation work has the potential to serve as a vantage point for kindergarten actors to discuss where they are heading.

The article focuses on documentation work in one pre-school group, taken from a large corpus of documentation work in two different kindergartens (a total of eight groups) in a small-to-medium-sized municipality in Southern Sweden. The documentation was produced using a digital template in PowerPoint format that contains 340 slides. The documentation work from the sample group includes 34 slides, including 11 slides taken from the template. The template was produced by the kindergartens’ management sections as a reworking of a national model for quality work in pre-school.

Petterson, K. E. (2019). “How a template for documentation in Swedish preschool systematic quality work produces qualities”. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 2019, 20(2):194–206.