”Akkurat som Medusa. Om litteratur- og kulturformidling i barnehagen: Basert på barnehageerfaring”.

The aim is to investigate how conscious and well-planned use of literature and culture can contribute to improving children’s understanding of language and texts and enhance their insight into different life-problems such as different lifestyles, attitudes and values. The study starts with examining how Norwegians who have attended daycare centres ("barnehage") remember their time at the centre and work with literature and culture, and how this has affected their lives later. The aim is also to motivate good practices in the use of literature and culture at daycare centres.

The results of the study show that work with literature at the daycare centre has been important, and that it has left a permanent imprint on the respondents who had attended the centre.

The former daycare-centre attendees experience that work with literature at the centre has affected their personal development. They remember that they were seen by the personnel and taken seriously.

The study also concludes that children are excited and happy when they hear a book read aloud. The respondents also stress the importance of pedagogical efforts to come close to the texts physically. The texts were dramatised and performed in groups. This gave them the experience of being an important part of a group, of something being expected of them, and a physical sensation of mastering the texts.

The study also shows that the personnel become aware of a conscious choice of literature in everyday contact and activities with the children.

The study is divided into three main themes in which the first part is a study of assessments of centres by people who attended the daycare centre. In the second part, literature is treated in a specialist daycare-centre context. The third part is composed of recommendations for working with literature and culture in daycare centres.

The data material for the empirical part of the study is based on a questionnaire survey about the literature and cultural content in practices at the daycare centre, including the working methods of the early childhood educators. The questionnaire was sent to 40 people who had attended a specific daycare centre ("bydelsbarnehage") in a Norwegian city. The respondents had attended the daycare centre at some time in the period from 1970 to the early 1990s. 17 of the 40 replied. In addition, qualitative interviews were conducted with six of the respondents and with one teacher who took over the children when they started school. The study is also based on observations at the daycare centre and conversations with the personnel.

Spurkland, M. (2014). ”Akkurat som Medusa. Om litteratur- og kulturformidling i barnehagen: Basert på barnehageerfaring”. Bergen: Fagbokforlaget.