Da kvaliteten kom til småbørnsinstitutionerne: beretninger om hvordan det går til, når kvalitet på det småbørnspædagogiske område skal vides og styres.

This dissertation explores how quality reporting is carried out in ECEC centres. The research questions are: What happens when ‘quality’, ‘effects’ and ‘results’ become the focal point for documenting, developing and governing ECEC? And how are children, ECEC teachers, and ECEC interpreted, negotiated and governed in the social processes in which ECEC centres and municipalities report and develop ‘quality’ and document effects and results?

The dissertation provides many results: observations and identification of rationales and truths that have become part of quality management work at the ECEC centres. For example, the analysis indicates that the classification and subdivision of the content of ECEC is part of defining how the world should be studied and what real-world data should apply. This framework affects how pedagogical practices can be viewed. The study shows how the content of ECEC is delimited by certain forms of relevance for quality, while others are left out. A specific example of this knowledge management is the tool Læringshjulet (the learning wheel), which will soon be digitised and linked to the quality reports. Læringshjulet is based on material which, according to the concept, must be prepared as the basis for parent/teacher conferences, and which is specifically connected to the individual child's transition to different types of institutions and encourages taking stock of the child's development. Seemingly neutral technologies and numbers help support a quality machinery which perceives choices and definitions - and thereby values - as technical questions that can be answered. The author describes how technology leads to a view of ECEC that is linked to the development of children’s competences. This means that the role of the teacher is defined as a sequence of actions, moving from the identification of intervention area(s) to applying a method for documenting effects and evaluation. Therefore, professional competence resembles systematic classification and competence development that monitors what the author calls an adult-defined child by dividing the child into different categories. This is further supported through displacement of the pedagogical discourse.

The study is based on two years of field study in two Copenhagen ECEC centres. The field studies consist of extensive observations, interviews and informal conversations with, and presentations for and by, consultants in municipalities, ECEC centre leaders, pedagogical leaders and ECEC teachers at the two centres. Furthermore, the centres' quality reports were examined closely with the intention of mapping their effect on the activities of the ECEC centres and municipalities. With a view to describing how knowledge of quality can be used to govern ECEC, the material was encoded with a focus on breaks, discontinuity and instability.

Togsverd, L. (2015). Da kvaliteten kom til småbørnsinstitutionerne: beretninger om hvordan det går til når kvalitet på det småbørnspædagogiske område skal vides og styres. Doctoral dissertation, Forskerskolen for Livslang Læring, Institut for Psykologi og Uddannelsesforskning, Roskilde Universitet.