Paper presented at ECER, the European Conference on Educational Research, 23-26 August 2016, Dublin, Ireland.
Research Director, dr. Ann S. Pihlgren, Ignite Research Institute
Box 116, SE-761 22 Norrtälje, SWEDEN
See slideshow: Slideshow Teaching environments
Read the paper: Teaching Environments in Preschool, Pihlgren
Abstract
This paper analyzes how preschool teachers and caretakers meet the demands for cognitive and creative development of children. Observations of 40 sessions in preschools for 1-5-year-old children, and staff interviews were used. The questions guiding the analysis concern how preschool staff describe the considerations they make when planning, how this is represented in the observed activities, and how the results compare to the school and afterschool material analysis.
Teaching thinking and creativity presupposes that the teacher plans, assesses, chooses activities and tools, and arranges the setting carefully, with focus on fostering children’s habits of mind. The contextual and communicational interactions play a vital part of support. Evidence of the anticipated criteria was difficult to ascertain in the observed preschools as well as in the previously observed classrooms and afterschools. All previously found teaching environments were found in the preschool material, with a bulk of the child-investigative teaching environment. This environment is similar to Pramling’s description of ‘child centered pedagogy’. A few preschool teachers present successful planning models and interactional activities to improve children’s thinking and creativity, and was found similar to Pramling’s ‘development pedagogy’.
