Utvecklingssamtal som uppgift och verktyg i förskollärares professionssträvanden i interaktion med föräldrar.

The purpose of this study is to examine teacher-parent progress interviews (i.e. parent-teacher conference) in eight Swedish daycare centres (förskola). The study examines the interview as a social practice and as part of the early childhood educators' job. Focus is particularly on how important the early childhood educators find the progress interview, and the allocation of responsibilities and role assignment of staff and parents in the interviews seen from the perspective of the early childhood educators.

Results and analysis show that the progress interview is an important tool for the early childhood educators to create a professional relationship with parents, and that the interview is an important practice and arena for cooperation between the home and the daycare centre. In addition, the results show that the parent-teacher conference is key in the early childhood educators' endeavours to create a complete picture of the child.

The study determines that at micro-level the progress interviews constitute an arena for assessing and controlling what is considered normal for the child, the parents and the daycare facility as an institution, including also for the early childhood educators as professionals.

At institutional level and at macro-level the early childhood educators aim to change and control existing practices and create new allocations of responsibilities and role assignments for the players involved by referring to the curriculum as a state directive.

The data material was collected through follow-up on progress interviews, in which individual interviews were carried out with early childhood educators immediately after the parent-teacher conference. The empirical material consists of a total of 15 interviews with early childhood educators in eight different daycare centres in Sweden. The interviews focussed on how staff experience the progress interview, the interview in general as well as how important these interviews can be for the different participants. As the study focusses on the early childhood educators' experience, the material has only been viewed from their perspective. In this way, the study is trying to determine what the early childhood educators think about the interviews as part of their professional work, and thereby generate more knowledge about the processes and practices that structure the interviews at the kindergarten. The analysis of the qualitative interviews is based on a post-structuralist perspective and a discursive power perspective.

Simonsson, M. & Markström, A. (2013). Utvecklingssamtal som uppgift och verktyg i förskollärares professionssträvanden i interaktion med föräldrar. Nordic Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 6 (12), 1-18.