Dokumentationens dilemman : Förskollärare samtalar om pedagogisk dokumentation

Abstract  Pedagogical documentation is a certain procedure for documenting that, in recent years, has been embraced in several Swedish preschools. Teachers document children’s actions and conversations usually by photos or video recordings. This documentation is to be used for a pedagogical purpose. However, studies and governmental inspections have shown that pedagogical documentation gives rise to many questions among preschool teachers. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into what is being expressed when preschool teachers discuss pedagogical documentation, focusing on themes of content and on the participants’ expressions of their points of view. The data is comprised of transcriptions from audio recordings of discussions conducted in a research circle. The participants are eight preschool teachers that met over the course of one year. Each meeting focused on the documentation provided by a different participant. In that way the contents of the discussions were framed by the teachers own questions and narratives. Theoretically, the study departs from Social Constructionism and Discursive Psychology. The preschool teachers’ utterances have been analyzed using concepts of interpretative repertoires and ideological dilemmas. The results show the main themes to be: Knowledge content in a preschool setting, children’s learning, the teacher’s role and implementation of pedagogical documentation. The participants’ joint position is that the knowledge content at the preschool level is defined by the curriculum for the preschool. Concerning children’s learning and the teacher’s role, two main standpoints are disclosed. Ideologically those standpoints derive from two opposing theories of education. Based on how the standpoints have been expressed I have called them ”predetermined learning” versus ”non-predetermined learning”. One main distinction between the standpoints is that predetermined learning emphasizes the results of learning, while non-predetermined learning emphasizes the processes of learning. The participants’ utterances show that teachers tend to subscribe to the idea that there is only one acceptable way of working with pedagogical documentation. This sometimes creates performance anxiety and feelings of not succeeding and has led to arguments advocating an alternate approach; pedagogical documentation can be done in many ways. The ideological dilemmas within the discourse can be perceived as resources by which the participants argue about knowledge, learning, teaching and about the implementation of pedagogical documentation.

Professionsmaktens framställning av fenomenet ADHD - en diskursanalys

In the body of knowledge surrounding ADHD there is a power struggle regarding which interpretations and perspectives should prevail. Representatives from various scientific disciplines and professions write and publish articles about the diagnosis based on their respective points of view. These articles are the focus of this thesis. Among other things it can be seen in these examined articles that, the prevalence of ADHD is higher amongst established bodies of social care, and that there is a lack of knowledge regarding the diagnosis in social systems such as schools and social services. Our aim with this study is to highlight how professionals within the Swedish contemporary field of knowledge surrounding ADHD create significance and meaning of the phenomenon. Based on Jonathan Potters discourse analysis, we focus on how ADHD is described by professionals in contemporary Swedish articles about ADHD and also on how these descriptions become valid and credible in these texts. The approach used in our case has been article analysis, based on Potter's rhetorical toolbox that includes both theory and method in one. ADHD is widely presented in the articles with descriptions ranging from a cultural disease constructed by prevailing social climate to being a genetic abnormality. Using various rhetorical strategies it is possible to establish totally different groups of interpretative repertoires as all true. In this thesis, we also discuss the possible consequences of these various explanations and constructions within social work and society at large.