Responsibility for teaching: a missed opportunity?

The aim of the study is to increase knowledge about how responsibility for teaching can be understood in a kindergarten context. More specifically, it focuses on how this responsibility is expressed during staff meetings among kindergarten employees.

The results show that the observed kindergarten teachers understand their role as responsible pedagogical leaders for teaching as a pedagogical practice to a greater extent than as a specific responsibility for teaching. The kindergarten teachers see the collective responsibility that staff have for teaching as favourable, even though different understandings of the educational assignment are raised as problematic. When responsibility for teaching is more clearly addressed, kindergarten teachers express feelings of pressure and uncertainty, as well as a need for more support.

The participants in the study were a group of five kindergarten teachers from two different kindergartens. The source data consists of audio recordings of a total of seventeen staff meetings involving these kindergarten teachers, where one of the meetings’ explicit goals was to strengthen the role of kindergarten teachers as responsible pedagogical leaders for teaching in kindergartens. The audio recordings were transcribed and analysed through some of the key concepts of Bernstein’s theory of pedagogical practice: classification, framing, horizontal and vertical discourse.

Catucci, E. (2021). “Responsibility for teaching: a missed opportunity?”. Journal of Early Childhood Education Research, 10(2):120-139.