Demokrati i förskolan - får barnen vara med och påverka verksamheten? : En intervjustudie med sju förskollärare om deras synsätt på barns inflytande
Abstract (Summary)This degree thesis illuminates children’s influence in preschool from a democratic point of view. Sweden is a democratic society where the ambition is to all human beings equal worth and where all human beings voice has equal value. In the preschool the educationalist lay the foundation to the children’s democratic way of thinking. The aim of this study was to examine how the personnel work in the preschools, to work with children’s influence and to see if their activity is characterized by a democratic way of working. Our expectation is that in the end the educationalist will support the children to take part in influencing and evaluating their own everyday life. This way of thinking characterizes every day and not just certain pre arranged times. The study was carried out with interviews with six preschool teachers and one project leader that have many years of preschool teaching experience, but during the recent five years have worked with developmental issues concerning preschools. The study was performed on three different preschools, two municipal and one that where a personnel cooperative. The study has a qualitative design with half structured questions but with spontaneous resulting questions depending on the answers given by the person interviewed. All literature in our examination reflects that all children’s influence is important for their development, and practice makes perfect concerning their rights, obligations and possibilities. All people have their rights and if they know and cares about them it’s easier to act in different situations (Boverket 2000). Ferm brings up the fact that we as adults are role models, both at home and in school, so for that reason it is important that we set good examples and act as we want the children to act. The children need to know that they really are someone and what they say or do affects other persons. It could lead to bullying and some reduction in human behavior (Ferm 1993). The examinations questions are based on what democracy is to the preschool teachers and how they see on children’s influence, if the children can influence the activity and what they can influence. The result that has emerged by the study is that Oxen which is one of the municipal preschools work more actively with the subject, and the others more or less practice sham democracy among the children. This is not intentionally but is caused by the recent start with the way of working, when the municipal preschool has actively worked with the way of thinking for several years. Nevertheless the will to work more with the children’s influence is present, more or less, in everybody. During the interview with Sara that works at Cancer, she discovered that the children really are not as much listened to as they thought. She thinks that they need to listen more to the children and that they have ideas to take care of. As it works today the adults take all the initiative, she thinks it is easy that everything goes by a certain routine. The way the Bull works haven’t we found described in any literature. The conclusions from the study are among other things that the educationalists way of thinking and awareness has a decisive role to work democratic, depending on if it’s positive or negative. If you are involved and have a positive way of thinking the chance is greater for a functioning activity.
School:Högskolan i Gävle
Source Type:Master's Thesis
Date of Publication:04/11/2008