Kvalitet i læring i barnehagen. En analyse av styringsdokumenter fra OECD og Norge.

Norway's ECEC system has undergone incredible progress in recent years. This has resulted in increased focus on the quality of ECEC centres as it is the intention to further develop them and offer high quality ECEC settings to everyone. As a result of this process, there has been increased focus on the role of ECEC centres as learning arenas as well as focus on how learning can affect quality assurance of Norwegian ECEC centres. Based on two ECEC policy/management documents, the purpose of this study is to analyse and identify descriptions of the concept of learning in order to examine what characterises the learning discourse in ECEC centres in Norway and in the OECD.

Overall, the results of the study indicate that the learning discourses from the two documents consist of ambiguous and contrasting understandings of learning. Despite this, the researcher assesses that it is possible to enhance the promotion of children’s specific, individual skills, as well as standardised learning goals in Norwegian ECEC settings (barnehage). However, this development seems to have consequences for children's social skills, solidarity and democratic knowledge. The conclusions of the study are based on three analytical themes that each considers the learning-based dichotomies of the two selected documents. These themes thereby reflect the similarities and differences between the learning discourse in the OECD and Norway, respectively.

The study is designed as a qualitative document analysis of an OECD report (Quality Matters in Early Childhood Education) and a white paper (Framtidens barnehage) from Norway. These two documents were selected on the basis of their description of Norway's ECEC and thereby on the assumption that they would be able to shed light on the study's research problem. The theoretical and methodological approach of this paper is based on Basil Bernstein's critical discourse analysis, which enables the researcher to highlight and describe the different learning discourses in the documents.

Nygård, M. (2015). Kvalitet i læring i barnehagen. En analyse av styringsdokumenter fra OECD og Norge. Nordisk Barnehageforskning 11(7), 1-18.