Reflections on Swedish Kindergartens.
In June, I joined a group of nursery
managers, teachers and an inspector to visit three Swedish pre-schools organised
by Tracy Seed[1], and on returning home I have been reflecting on my experiences. The
practice of early childhood education (1-6 years) in Sweden embodies different
ways of engaging with children in educational contexts when compared with the
UK. How adults plan and construct experiences for children is a complex
business that can reveal much about who we think the child in front of us is,
and by implication, who we think the adult organizing those experiences is and
what is the relationship between them. I have therefore been thinking about the
practices of the pre-schools and reflecting on the theoretical frameworks that
seem to inform how they organize and manage the settings. I hope to raise some
issues that everyone involved in providing educational experiences for young
children will be interested in. Recently I have been working with settings that
support 1-4 year olds and we have explored our thinking about child and
childhood and acknowledged how this influences our interactions with children
and shapes the experiences we make available to them. In light of this I was
particularly interested in finding out how the adults in the Ängbybarnens Preschools in Stockholm talked about the concept of
child.
Before I go on to discuss what I observed and
talked about, it is important to say something about my own thinking about
child and childhood. This is important because the lens that we use to look at
practice will shape our interpretation of what we see. I bring to my
observations the idea that there is not a thing called childhood that all human
beings experience, but rather many different childhoods. My own experience of
childhood is very different from those of the Swedish pedagogues, partly because
of differences in where, when and with whom our childhoods took place. Our
individual experiences influence how we look at childhood from our adult
perspectives, and at the child inside us all. Childhood also varies according
to historical time as well as geographical place, which in turn are influenced
by social, political and economic circumstances.
Childhood is therefore a socially constructed
phenomena and I am interested to reflect on how ‘child’ is constructed in the
Swedish context and the impact this construction has on the practices in the preschools,
and on the relationships between adults and the 1-6 year olds they interact
with, whilst being aware that my own lens of experience influences my
interpretation of what I see. As a teacher, academic, educator, mother and
grandmother, I also bring theoretical and practical ways of looking at the
world and this influences how I interpret the settings I have visited. In the
Swedish preschools we discussed the theory that informs their practice and
those discussions also influenced how I interpreted what I saw as I tried to
see things through their eyes. Having said this, my reflections are my own, and
this is not an attempt to provide a truthful or accurate account of what goes
on in Swedish preschools from the snapshot I was privileged enough to experience.
Feeling
inspired!
The first thing that struck me was the
outdoor areas of the schools. They were much bigger than anything I have seen
in the UK, (not surprising as the Swedish government mandates 7 square metres
per child (almost double the amount the UK government requires) and the overall
teacher-child ratio is 1-5. Children are taught in age-groups, and each group
is led by a teacher who has a BA/BSc degree plus a childcare qualification that
involves a further three years study. I was slightly surprised at this kind of
grouping, it suggests that the pedagogues work with a developmental model of
childhood linked to ages. It influences what activities are available to the
children and impacts on the kinds of interactions they can have.
Empathic
communication
How adults and children interact with each
other is central to how relationships are constructed in the schools and this
is certainly the case here, the communicative and relational approach followed
in Angbybarners is based on empathic communication. This means focusing on
listening to the child’s experiences rather than making assumptions about a
child’s meaning.
“By using an
empathic approach inspired by Nonviolent Communication, we increase the
possibility of meeting each other with respect, understanding different needs
and desires, and interacting in a way that leads to a shared development”.
Preschool Brochure.
The staff assume that children want to
cooperate and be part of the community. When they ask the children to do
something, they tell them why so that it feels meaningful for them. They want
the children to feel free when they play and create, and not be hindered by the
fear of failing. Staff also express genuine appreciation for whom the children
are and for the things they do in order to build their self-esteem and
self-confidence. The staff do not assess or judge the children against
pre-determined criteria or compliment them on their achievements as they
believe this can block their ability to evaluate their experiences themselves.
They want them to be independent and not dependent on other people’s approval,
to feel good about themselves and their behavior.
This vision of the preschools is driven by a
commitment to strengthen children’s self-esteem so that the children have the
self-confidence to be happy with their actions. Empathic communication informs
all interactions and structures the relationships not only between children and
adults, but between the adults and between the children. The decision to follow
this approach comes from a commitment to non-violent communication as important
for achieving the lofty goal of world peace. Staff are all trained in empathic
communication and this influences how they theorize their role as pedagogues. They are concerned to hear the child’s
voice and time is always found to listen to the children and their ideas,
aiming to be response-able in their communications with children and in their
recording of the pedagogical practice. I have deliberately hyphenated ‘response-able’
to emphasis that not all adults are able to respond to children empathetically
and staff here all has training.
The leader of the schools explained that empathic
communication works in a cycle. First of all the adult is concerned to make a
connection with the child. The underlying expectation is that the child wants
to cooperate and wants to be helpful. When they enter into dialogue with a
child they begin by observing what the child is doing and describe what they
see without feeling or judgement. They then try to recognize and connect with
the feelings of the child and from this consider what the need of the child is in
order to meet those needs by helping the child make a request to indicate what
they want.
Teachers practice responsive listening by
asking themselves, “What is she
experiencing? What do I think she feels and needs right now?” They believe
the children learn about consequences of actions when shown care and
understanding, and they use rational authority to explain why they want a child
to do something, for example, a child hits another child who is playing with a
car.
T: You can
be angry, but you mustn’t hit people because it hurts. Did you also want to
play with the car? You can try saying, “Can I have the car when you’ve finished
playing with it.”’
If a
child is doing something they consider dangerous the staff use rational
authority to explain why they want the child to do something else. In this
scenario a child is climbing on a tall stool:
T: Do you find climbing exciting?
C: Yes!
T: You can hurt yourself and I don’t want that to happen.
Child cries
T: Come! Let’s find somewhere else where you can climb.
C: OK
The
above illustrates how staff pay attention to children’s experiences, to show
them that they see and understand what they are doing and seek to understand why.
Empathic communication requires them to connect with the child and acknowledge
their feelings before they offer advice or teaching and in this way they show
respect for the learning process and reduce the risk of hindering the
children’s curiosity to learn.
Reggio
Emilia inspired practice
The preschools
are inspired by the practice of the early education approach from Italy that is
frequently referred to as ‘Reggio’. Like Lorus Malaguzzi, the founder of
Reggio, the teachers see their settings as a place for democratic practices and
conversations. Following the ideas of Reggio Emilia and the idea of the 100
languages of children, the school places great emphasis on the arts and its
capacity to promote creative learning. The physical space,
both indoors and outdoors is a place that is expected to promote thought and
action in children through play. The indoor physical space makes careful
use of light and colour augmented by light boxes, projectors, cameras, and all
kinds of artist materials to support curiosity and imaginative learning. The
adults seek to be present for the children, they listen and connect with the
children’s needs and take an active part in the exploratory learning of the
children. To support their creative endeavors, one day a week all the children
spend the day with a trained arts and craft specialist.
Talking
to staff about day-to-day practice we were told that the environment is planned
so that the children have the chance to do things themselves and use their
abilities and skills as much as possible. They want the children to get the
chance to practice thinking and choosing for themselves within limited and safe
boundaries. There was an underlying expectation that the children’s thinking
would develop automatically and naturally as they engaged with the materials
and experiences on offer. Teachers I spoke to described children as naturally
curious and questioning, filled with the desire to learn, to find out and to
explore the world. Choice is important here; teachers believe children grow
when they get to choose what they like and what helps them develop. This extends to
eating. Children from two years old can decide to go on playing at lunchtime or
go and eat in the dining room. They serve themselves lunch and therefore choose
what they want to eat from the buffet and then choose where they want to sit. Even
very young children poured their own water from large water jugs
The
Reggio approach was also evident in the pedagogic documentation that is used to
track each child’s journey into meaning-making. The photographs and commentaries accompanying
children’s drawings, paintings and three-dimensional constructions were used to
document each child’s activities and provided insight into their interests and
learning pathways. The child’s interests were of paramount importance; we were
also told that children continue with whatever they are interested in as long
as it holds their interest without adult interference. The children’s work was visible
around the school as ‘work in progress’. Everything the child did was valued; there
was no emphasis on displaying excellence that is a common practice in UK
nurseries and preschools, children’s experimentation with all sorts of
materials was visible for all to see.
Learning outside
In Sweden there is a huge emphasis on
learning out-of-doors through children’s engagement with natural materials and
with living nature. As well as the outdoor areas around the schools, children
regularly visit the forest regardless of the weather. As we observed the
children playing outdoors and in the forest all of us from the UK were struck
by the apparent lack of attention to health and safety and risk-taking. Discussing
this with staff it became clear that the model of child held by the pedagogues was
of a robust child who needed to take risks and explore, who might get hurt, but
that was expected as part of the rough and tumble of growing up and necessary
for their development. The adults trusted that children were capable of
assessing risk for themselves and would learn from their experiences. The early
years practitioners from the UK liked what they saw and were critical of our system
with its preoccupation with health and safety which impacts on where children are
allowed to go in school settings and often results in children being indoors for
most of the time and wherever they are, always in sight of an adult. We saw
many things going on in the Swedish context that would have required complex
risk assessment if they were taking place in the UK.
Theoretical frameworks
My discussions with the teachers suggests they
were influenced by constructivist theories of child development and Piaget was
mentioned several times. Piaget saw children as ‘little scientists’,
discovering the world for themselves through exploration and experiment. However,
this naturalist model of the child who unfolds naturally according to a
biological blueprint if in the right environment is not the only model that
influences practice. Staff are also influenced by the social-constructivism
associated with Vygotsky. This is apparent in their emphasis on empathic
communication which depends on the belief that a young child is capable of
empathy. Such a view is a direct challenge to Piaget’s conclusion that the young
child is unable to empathise with other points of view. At the heart of the
interactions between the staff and the children is the desire to support the
children to explore and to understand different points of view and ways of
seeing the world. The children are given opportunities to practice empathy in
situations that make sense to them because they arise either from their own
experience or vicariously through story. From what I observed and from
conversations with staff, it seems that the child is primarily seen as a social
child embedded in social relationships that are of central importance to the
pedagogic practices of the preschools.
The model of child is of a competent and
active meaning-maker with a voice of their own that needs to be taken seriously
and a 100 languages. Teachers had clearly embraced the Reggio model of the
child as rich, resilient and resourceful. In their engagement with the children
the adults told us they treated children as active and collaborative partners,
as subjects acting in the world. The rights of the child were respected, their
views were sought and taken seriously and this was expressed through staff
commitment to ensuring children’s rights to freedom of expression, which is
placed at the heart of what goes on each day. Each child is valued as an individual with their own
capacities that needs time for exploration with the right to play, make choices
and participate. Despite this emphasis on the rights of the individual, the
need for rights to be exercised in relationship with others also underpins the empathic
communication approach, showing consideration to others is expected. Empathic
thinking is encouraged not just in the ways adults relate to the children, it
is also modeled through the use of puppets with an emphasis on feelings. To
assist this with pre-verbal children the staff use feelings emoticons that
depict key emotions: sad, happy, angry, grumpy, scared and proud. The role of
language in communication is so important to the staff that the children are
taught sign language as soon as they join the kindergarten at one year old. They
are introduced to signs to express feelings and children quickly learn how to sign
to each other and the teachers. This helps them to express their needs, e.g.
feeling hungry or tired, or their wants, e.g. food, to sleep, or their
emotions, e.g. sad, angry or happy. Expression of needs and emotions provides
the basis of empathic communication. The feelings cards and signs also accompany
stories that are shared with the children. In this way they give the children a
chance to acknowledge and identify the actions and emotions of story characters.
Language however, is not the only medium for communication or
knowledge construction. There are many opportunities for children to communicate
through play, through manipulating materials, through interaction with the
environment, through arrangements of artefacts. It was not just language and
the social that was important, but the material. I was particularly struck by
what I immediately thought of as an installation created by a group of children
who were thinking about travel. Following up on children’s expressed interests
the teachers had provided artefacts that could be associated with travel
including suitcases, shoes and clothing. The children had laid out fabric that
appeared to represent a road and placed pairs of shoes to indicate travel. This
appeared to be an example of children using one of their 100 languages to
express the concept of travel, of movement, of direction. I don’t know which
children created this representation as they had left the room for lunch and
had not been supervised during its creation. I was struck by how their
representation made their ideas visible to us as we passed through the room. I
think this indicates children who are confident in their own ability to make
sense of the world and to share this with others. Empathic communication
requires adults to look at children’s creations and think about what they might
be expressing, whether it be through body language in their play or through the
artefacts they create. The teachers we spoke to fully expected to learn from
the children, as much, if not more than they expected to teach them. The
important thing was to follow the children’s interests. Opportunities for this
to happen abounded in the schools.
Looking at the pedagogical documentation we
were shown and observing the children engaged in various representations of
their thinking through a wide range of artist and natural materials it was
clear that the children’s own creations were valued as part of their
meaning-making processes. The creation of opportunities for visual
representation of their thinking and seeing what they produced as a window into
the meaning-making process was at the heart of what goes on here.
Things that surprised me
I turn now to reflect on things that
surprised me. Top of this list is the lack of storybooks and of the poor
quality of picture books available to the children. Perhaps this is not
surprising considering there are much less that a million children under six in
Sweden so the audience for Swedish language books is small – not a lot of
profit for publishers here. This goes some way to explain why the libraries in
the kindergartens were not inviting and didn’t seem to attract the children.
During the three days I only saw one child sitting outside with books and no
children looking at books. That doesn’t mean children don’t engage with story,
there were story boxes with puppets and artefacts that teachers used to tell
stories to the children. I wondered if the fact that formal literacy in Sweden
doesn’t begin until children start school at age seven might explain why there
was no apparent emphasis on using books to promote literacy.
Teachers I asked gave different reasons for
using books and this was mainly to support their commitment to empathic
communication. Stories were used to help children reflect on the feelings of
characters. Teachers use story boxes to tell traditional stories and then ask
the children to consider the behavior of characters, to think about the needs
of characters that behaved badly. The troll for example, in ‘The Three Billy
Goats Gruff’ was ‘probably hungry’ and ‘had a need for food’. The teacher
explained she would ask the children how being hungry would make them feel. As
far as I could see the main purpose of books was to support teachers who were
concerned to develop children’s self-esteem and extend their understanding of
emotions and needs and the role they play in behavior. It is this that they primarily
considered to be worthwhile learning when using books.
A second area I found surprising was the lack
of intervention in children’s play and activities. I observed in one
kindergarten in particular a lot of segregated children’s play. Boys dominated
in the Lego area and in some of the outside areas, but teachers didn’t want to
interfere with their choices. More girls were engaged with craft activities
indoors than boys and there was little evidence of mixed gender play. I
discussed the issue with staff and got the impression that they didn’t see
their role extending to challenging systemic issues like gender inequality.
What would I do differently?
A very important aspect of this visit has
been my reflections on what I would want to see introduced into the schools,
what I would do differently. Top of my list would be greater attention to
story-telling, role-play and imaginative responses to story. There was some
evidence that this was taking place in one classroom where children, aged 5-6 had
created a world of imaginary people that lived complex lives, where all sorts
of unexpected issues cropped up and were resolved. The teacher, Veronica told me
that each day the children come up with more characters, more settings and more
problems to be solved. With her encouragement they created a miniature world in
a fish tank and many characters and artefacts they have drawn and made using a
variety of materials as the photographs show.
Such
worlds of play can give rise to philosophical questioning and I would love to
see a community of philosophical enquiry established in the pre-schools so the
children can explore conceptual ideas together. Teachers in Sweden observe
children in play and have the opportunity to listen in order to identify the
philosophical and then plan a pedagogical intervention to facilitate children’s
thinking. In Veronica’s classroom the children are naturally theorizing about
the world they have created, it is a short step for the teacher to open up new
ideas and themes arising from their story-making and creating to facilitate further
meaning-making.
I have argued elsewhere as follows:
1: Narrative
understanding is the primary meaning-making tool.
2: Human beings
make sense of experience by imposing story structure on it and in fact narrative is our way of experiencing, acting,
living and dealing with time.
3: Story has a
unique power to engage all human beings both emotionally and cognitively. Unless
there is emotional engagement there will be no cognitive development.
4: Narrative Understanding
depends on our imagination. Children live in their imaginations.
If all these premises are true
then the implications are clear: we must create a curriculum that is shaped by
narratives and use story to engage children in learning. My research has been
interested in finding out what happens
when children are immersed in stories – where their imaginations drive the
curriculum they create for themselves. Part and parcel of this approach is the
use of philosophy with children to support their play and meaning-making. In a
recent chapter my colleague Sara Stanley and I have argued that it is through
play that children experience in an embodied way concepts that are recognized
as philosophical problems. Furthermore, as children give shape to their selves
in the aesthetic space of play they can explore their moral selves.
In my
practice and work with schools I use story to work with children’s imagination,
to promote emotional engagement and inspire fantasy play. Drama and role-play
provide further opportunities for children’s meaning-making and in the process
they explore concepts that abound in children’s stories, for example, fear, anger,
love, friendship, jealousy, kindness, cruelty, struggle, loneliness, deprivation,
courage, determination, persistence, triumph and so on. The concepts are
reflected in their play and Sara Stanley has identified a number those that
frequently arise in the early years classroom:
• It’s my turn (fairness)
• You’re not my friend any more
(friendship)
• Not now (time)
• No that toy is mine (ownership)
• You’re the baddy and I’ll be the goodie (good/bad)
• You’re not sharing (sharing)
• Don’t scream at me. That’s not what friends
do (friendship)
• The fairy is here but she’s invisible
(proof)
• That’s going to be impossible
(possibilities)
• The dragon is going to get you back
(revenge)
• Only girls can play this game (gender)
These
are philosophical concepts and when teachers are trained to work
philosophically with children it has the potential to enhance the work that is
already being done in Swedish pre-schools. Staff are already very attentive to
the children and their needs, this could be extended to encouraging them to
play the stories they are told, to create their own stories and help them to
build on and develop them. Staff now are concerned to really listen to children
and to respect their ideas. I think this could be extended to include their
stories and exploration of the abstract concepts that are embedded in them.
We all
know that the actions of adults shape the lives of children in preschool; the
space that is created for the children in Ängbybarnens is one committed to the child’s interests
and seeks to bring each child’s unique being into the world. I think this
practice could be further enhanced with more use of story, supporting play
arising from story and through philosophizing with the adults around the
concepts that rise from the children’s story-play.
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