Lärandets skiftande innebörder : uttryckta av förskollärare i vidareutbildning

Abstract

The aim of the study was to describe how pre-school teachers in further education create meaning in their own learning and how they participate in children’s learning. Three questions investigated in the study are: What are the conceptions of one’s own learning? What are the conceptions of participation in children’s learning? Do the conceptions of one’s own learning and/or the conceptions of participation in children’s learning during the course of the education program change and if so, how? The theoretical background of the study is variation theory and its concepts discernment, simultaneity and variation. This theory has been developed into a theory of awareness in order to analyse and understand what takes place in the pedagogues’ awareness. With the aid of this theory, it is possible to shed light on what emerges as figure in their awareness and what is background in their creation of meaning. The phenomenographic research approach constitutes the methodological basis of the study – a perspective of people’s learning and knowledge formation that is holistic and nondualistic, i.e. people’s understanding of the world around them cannot be separated from the world they live in. The research group consists of 15 professionally active pedagogues attending a supplementary education program: Program in education – orientation towards early childhood education 40 points. The data material consists of 37 interviews carried out over a 2-year period. The results from the study show that the participants express three qualitatively different conceptions of how they learn: Creating meaning via communication (category 1), creating meaning via professional practice (category 2) and creating meaning via reflection on one’s own learning (category 3). The determining factor in the pedagogues’ creation of meaning is the variation they themselves create in each category. The pedagogues describe how they participate in children’s learning in two qualitatively different ways: Being sensitive to the children and the world around them (category A) and Challenging the children in their learning (category B). The conceptions in categories A and B are hierarchical, which means that category A is fundamental to the pedagogues’ participation in children’s learning. Two thirds of the pedagogues change so that they understand what they are learning when they reflect on their own learning and an equal number (although partly different individuals) change so that they challenge the children in their learning during the period they are attending the education program. A little less than half the participants undergo both changes, i.e. they both reflect on their own learning and challenge the children in their learning.