“Socialisation tensions in the Swedish Preschool Curriculum – the case of mathematics”.

The purpose of this study is to examine the goals and guidelines in the revised national curriculum for preschools that was implemented at Swedish preschools in June 2011. The intention is to look at how the generally increased focus on learning and knowledge in the revised curriculum affects children’s socialisation. Socialisation in this context means a process in which children acquire the skills required to be able to act as members of society. This is something the authors believe involves both being able to reproduce cultural understandings from one generation to the next, and being able to produce new ideas. The study examines these aspects in relation to mathematics in particular.

The study shows that some of the goals and guidelines indicate that preschools should encourage children to use the preschool context to influence their own situation, surroundings and activities. These points address the children’s being, as they express the importance of the children being allowed to contribute to creating their own experiences, express their own views, and realise their ideas in activities. The results of the study also show that many goals and guidelines position the children as becoming. For example, goals and guidelines in which the children are mentioned as individuals with a need to become socialised by acquiring the necessary competences to be able to function as members of society. Or in which children are mentioned as individuals with a need to acquire what others in society have decided is necessary to learn.

The general goals and guidelines position children as both being and becoming, which means that preschool teachers are likely to be able to create activities that socialise children to both create and acquire cultural understandings. In contrast to this, the goals and guidelines related to mathematics almost exclusively position children as becoming, which means that preschool teachers are not supported in their perception of children as already having competences and norms. On the basis of these results, the study argues that it is desirable and possible to write more of the goals and guidelines such that they contain views of children as being and becoming simultaneously. This would support preschool teachers in using actively children’s norms and competences in planning activities in which children both create and learn cultural understandings, including understandings concerning mathematics.

The authors use two concepts in the analysis of the goals and guidelines in the revised national curriculum: “being” and “becoming”. The concepts used to investigate how the greater focus on goals and guidelines in the revised curriculum create a contradiction in children’s socialisation. It was assumed that the children’s being as “mathematicians” would appear in the goals and guidelines by the children being positioned as being in possession of mathematical norms, values, skills and knowledge, which they take with them in new activities. On the other hand, the children are positioned as becoming “mathematicians” in the curriculum goals and guidelines in that they are described as being “incomplete” and that they need to acquire norms, values, skills and knowledge.

In order to identify the type of socialisation promoted by the curriculum with specific goals or guidelines, the study identifies whether focus is on children’s being or becoming in the individual goals and guidelines. The 61 goals and guidelines were examined on the basis of this, of which 57 are general goals and guidelines, and four aim specifically at mathematics. The children’s being was considered as the focus of the goal/guidelines if it deals with children creating their own experiences, through which they are strengthened and encouraged to be active agents. The children’s becoming was considered as the focus of the goal/guidelines if it addressed the child’s need to acquire specific knowledge, need for stimulation, and opportunities to develop specific competences.

Lembrér, D. & Meaney, T. (2014). “Socialisation tensions in the Swedish Preschool Curriculum – the case of mathematics”. I: Bergman, L. m.fl. (red.): Childhood, learning and didactics. Educare-vetenskapliga skrifter, 2014:2. Malmö: Malmö Högskola. 89-106.