”Barn med samspillsvansker og ansattes dilemma relatert til retten til medvirkning i barnehagen”.

The dissertation is based on a collection of articles and comprises a total of four articles. The overall purpose is to examine possible dilemmas in relation to staff’s mandate and experiences with regard to working with children with social interaction challenges in Norwegian preschools, including the rights of these children and their possibilities for participating in activities. The author uses the term social interaction challenges as a broad term that refers to relational disabilities, that is children’s challenges are seen as both caused by nature and nurture. The study elucidates this on the basis of the understanding that children with social interaction challenges enjoy more rights than most other children, and that the preschool staff are responsible for ensuring that these rights are protected. Thus, the preschool staff function as gatekeepers for this group of children with regard to their possibilities for participating in activities.

The four articles in the dissertation examine different aspects of the overall issue. Article 2 examines and discusses the theoretical perspectives (closeness ethics and recognition (Honneth and Fraser)), whereas articles 1, 3 and 4 address the issue from an empirical perspective. Article 1 focuses on the preschool staff’s everyday experiences with children who have social interaction challenges and the dilemmas caused by these challenges. Article 3 examines how pedagogical staff can help these children or make their situation more challenging with regard to participating in activities and being recognised. Article 4 focuses more on children with social interaction challenges, for example, how these children use body language when communicating and the challenges this can pose in a preschool setting.

The study indicates that the practices in the preschools entail actions and structures that can be seen as being both recognising and inhibiting with regard to children with special needs. For example, the pedagogical practices that help children with social interaction challenges participate in activities in the preschool can be recognising. In contrast, pedagogical practices that, for example due to rules, interrupt social interactions between children can be seen as being inhibiting with regard to children who have social interaction challenges. In general, the planned structure and special initiatives taken with regard to children with social interaction challenges mean that these children’s everyday life is different from that of most other children. With regard to the preschool staff, the different rights among the children give rise to dilemmas about whether special needs children should be protected, excluded from the community, and whether staff attempt to the minimise these children’s challenges.

The study shows that staff are caught in the dilemma of accommodating the child’s specific needs and accommodating the needs of the entire group of children in the specific preschool. Moreover, the study shows that when staff deal with these dilemmas, they do so based on their own judgement of the particular situation. The choices made by staff in these situations fall within in the field of tension between duty- and rule-based actions and relational ethical assessments.

The study is based on observation of participants and qualitative interviews in three Norwegian preschools in the period 2008 to 2009. The preschools were chosen on the basis of ownership type and location. All the preschools have children with social interaction challenges. The study’s empirical data basis comprises: field notes from face-to-face interactions between children and between children and adults; focus group interviews with 22 staff members conducted in the three preschools; and interviews/conversations with a total of 54 children. In addition to this empirical material, the study includes a theoretical discussion of the phenomenon of participation and children’s social interaction challenges. The theory used is based on the ethics of closeness as well as on Honneth and Fraser’s concepts of recognition. The analysis process is described as being based on hermeneutic phenomenology.

Åmot, I. (2014). ”Barn med samspillsvansker og ansattes dilemma relatert til retten til medvirkning i barnehagen”. Ph.d.-avhandling. Trondheim: Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet.