Learning in preschool: Teachers’ talk about their work with documentation in Swedish preschools

Abstract

This article investigates preschool teachers’ professionalism and professional strategies in relation to narratives about learning in preschool. These are expressed through the teachers’ talk about documentation. A policy on increased systematic documentation in preschools has been introduced in Sweden. Preschool teachers were interviewed about their work with documentation in different preschool settings. The analysis departs from theories considering education policy as interpreted and enacted in local contexts and from theories that stress the actor’s perspective on preschool teaching professionalism. Furthermore, the teachers’ references to an institutional narrative about learning are the focus. Institutional narratives that construct breaks and continuities within the institution’s past are referred to in texts and talk within institutions. They are used as a means to govern the institution and by the teachers to position themselves. Results show that the teachers frequently refer to a ‘preschool-kind of learning’ that departs from the children’s interests in their talk about documentation. This, I argue, stands out as a professional strategy that allows teachers to deal with contradictory policies about what should be documented. In their talk about how to conduct documentation, the teachers position themselves as learners. This is a way of ‘doing professionalism’ that allows teachers to deal with demands for accountability in a way that also allows for professional agency.

Keywords

documentation learning policies for early education preschool professionalization

Introduction

This article investigates the teacher profession in Swedish preschools through focusing on the teachers’ current work on documentation. A certain interest is directed to the ways teachers ‘do professionalism’ (Osgood, 2012: 130) in the talk about their experiences with documentation. The article accedes to a field of research focusing on how professionalism is developed by teachers in preschool (Taggart, 2011; Vincent and Ball, 2006) and in their life stories (Pedersen et al., 2013; Löfgren, 2014; withheld, 2014). Osgood (2012) notes an absence of accountability, rationalism and measurability as traits of professionalism in British preschool teachers’ self-definitions. However, a growing interest from the state in setting explicit expectations for children’s learning outcomes in US preschools has been described in terms of an educationalization (Kagan and Kauerz, 2007: 13). This development is driven by an agenda based on accountability, including an increased emphasis on learning standards, curricular effectiveness and formal teacher qualifications. Recent reports from a research project¹ on Swedish preschools found that the preschool teaching profession also is changing in line with discourses that stress accountability and performativity in preschool due to a policy of increased documentation (Löfdahl, 2014; Löfdahl and Pérez Prieto, 2009b). One conclusion drawn is that ‘a new way of being professional could be to be good at positioning oneself’ (Löfdahl and Pérez Prieto, 2009a: 405). This study is based on interviews with 17 preschool teachers in two Swedish towns. The data are collected within the same project. In a previous analysis of these data, I noticed that the teachers frequently referred to learning as a central part of their work with documentation (Löfgren, 2014). This emphasis on learning that is in line with an increased interest directed to learning in the revised national curriculum (Lpfö 98, 2010) and in other recent reports (Folke-Fichtelius and Löfdahl, in press) aroused my curiosity and is investigated further in this study.

Learning has been a central part of preschool assignments and of teachers’ work for a long time (Dahlberg and Lenz Taguchi, 1994) and is therefore regarded as an institutional narrative in this article. Significant for institutional narratives is that they are known to and re-told by the members of the institution (Linde, 2009). They are found in formal documents, such as the national curriculum, and in speeches from the managers, serving as a way to govern the institution. However, they are also referred to in the talk of the institution’s members serving as a way to position oneself within the institution. In this study, I highlight the institutional narrative of learning as it is referred to in the preschool teachers’ talk of documentation. The frequent references to learning and the ways these references are done in the data are the reasons for the two questions discussed in the article. First, the teachers’ frequent references to children’s learning in their talk about the content of the documentation stress that the learning they try to document is of a certain kind that is different from learning in school. Therefore, I ask what constitutes this ‘preschool-kind of learning’ and in what way this functions as a strategy that allows teachers to deal with the policy of increased documentation. Second, I note in the data that the teachers refer to learning not only when they talk about the content of the documentation but also when they talk about themselves as documenting teachers. Therefore, I ask how the teachers position themselves vis-a-vis the institutional narrative of learning and what consequences it has for their constructions of professionalism. In other words, how do they ‘do professionalism’ by referring to learning in preschool?

The aim of the article is to study how preschool teachers ‘do professionalism’ and shape professional strategies by referring to an institutional narrative about learning in preschool in their talk about documentation.

Theoretical strands

The article is based on theories of teacher professionalism and pedagogical work in preschool (Ball, 2006; Osgood, 2012) and on theories of institutional narratives (Law, 1994; Linde, 2009).

Professional insecurity in the performative preschool

Education policy is considered to be something that is not only required of people but also as something that ‘pose[s] problems to their subjects, problems that must be solved in context’ (Ball, 2006: 21). In this vein, the performative preschool is considered an institution in which policies of transparency, control and competition are dealt with through preschool teachers’ work with documentation in local contexts. Performativity is viewed as a technology, a culture and a governance model (Ball, 2006), through which quality reviews and comparisons are used as incentives to control and change. The governance model is based on accountability and competition, where the visibility of preschools has a key function. It allows control not only from local and central governments but also from parents who are seen as prospective customers. This is the backdrop to which we can understand documentation and quality reports as versions of an institution or as ‘fabrications’ (Ball, 2006: 692) that are intended for external assessments. Outwardly, these fabrications act as displays on the market or in inspections. Inwardly, they work to discipline and produce consensus that blurs differences and contradictions. ‘Fabrications are both resistance and capitulation’ (Ball, 2006: 153). They serve as instruments for monitoring and control and as instrumentation to escape control and shape resistance. These documents are used when dealing with policies and in the development of professional strategies (Löfdahl, 2014). However, the flow of changing policies and ambiguities around what is expected from the professionals leads to an ontological uncertainty, which implies a sense of professional insecurity where teachers are constantly being assessed by various criteria and on different grounds, followed by questions such as ‘are we doing enough and are we right?’ (Ball, 2006: 148). Osgood (2012) addresses this insecurity in her analysis of relationships between parents and preschool teachers. She describes this relationship as marked by distrust and that ‘the ontological insecurity that nursery workers feel in relation to their sense of professionalism is shaped by and through hegemonic discourses’ (p. 12). She concludes that preschool teachers negotiated, rejected or drew on maternalistic policy discourses around normative middle-class mothering when shaping their professional identities and ‘doing professionalism’. She also finds it evident that the preschool teachers feel more secure in contexts where parents support their professional status, which is in line with my previous study (Löfgren, 2014: 151).

Educationalization and teachers ‘doing professionalism’ in preschool

Professional status is usually associated with having a code of professional ethics, a professional organization, a systematic base of knowledge and a regulated career path. Furthermore, evolving notions of professionalism in preschool are influenced by policies of accountability and evidence-based practice that stress scientific knowledge and standardized procedures (Douglass and Hoffer Gittell, 2012). Such descriptions of professionalism are favoured by trends that converge into what has been referred to as the educationalization of childcare (Kagan and Kauerz, 2007: 12). The concept illustrates trends in the United States where business promotes early childhood education for increased competitiveness, framed by state initiatives for increased school readiness and a push to define, measure and report young children’s learning outcomes. The learning involved here is of a ‘school-kind’, where the knowledge is clearly defined and is supposed to give the children a good start in school. This linking of preschool teachers’ work to demands on standards-based education and to learning goals in the national curriculum has been part of the professionalizing efforts in preschool. The teachers’ professional legitimacy, from this point of view, becomes a matter of being accountable for externally defined quality criterion. However, it has been argued that this kind of reasoning has favoured educational aspects and downplayed caring as an aspect of preschool teachers’ professional work and that there is a need for new ways to investigate the preschool teaching profession (Halldén, 2011).

In this study, where I deal with documentation and the teachers’ talk is focused on learning, it would be easy to describe their professionalism only as a result of the educationalization of childcare and through the agenda of accountability. But drawing on research of ‘professionalism from within’ (Osgood, 2012: 130), I intend to stress the complexity that occurs when teachers ‘do professionalism’ by referring to the institutional narrative of learning. This field of research investigates questions of how professional standards are developed by the teachers themselves and whether it guides or limits their agency (Taggart, 2011). Some studies emphasize that professionalism develops within local contexts (Karila, 2008; Vincent and Ball, 2006), and others argue that teachers articulate professionalism in their life stories (Löfgren, 2014; Pedersen et al., 2013). One type of research seeks to find alternative criterion of professionalism in preschool rather than the traditional concepts such as rational-legal forms of authority, accountability and external forms of regulations/performance review (Evetts, 2010). This is done by highlighting emotions as a core aspect of the profession (Ashforth and Tomiuk, 2000). The main traits of professionalism highlighted in Osgood’s (2012) descriptions of preschool teachers ‘doing professionalism’ describe their work as an emotional labour. Caring/loving/compassion, fairness and collegiality are listed in the top three traits of professionalism. Yet, she finds no evidence for traits like rationalism, accountability and measurability in her data. In the same vein, Petersen et al. (2013) stress social relations as the main trait of professionalism in preschool, and Simpson (2010) highlights aspects of care, love for children and nurturing as important aspects of the profession.

In this article, I argue that an analysis of teachers ‘doing professionalism from within’ can focus on how teachers deal with policies. I describe ‘professionalism from within’ as a way of taking the teachers’ perspectives when describing changes in the education system (Löfgren, 2012). This way ‘doing professionalism’ is a matter of how teachers deal with policies in creative, and sometimes personal, ways through ‘interpretations’ and ‘enactments’ (Ball et al., 2012). In this study, preschool teachers’ talk about documentation is analysed as performative accounts that reflect how they use their personal experiences and the institutional narrative of learning when they deal with a policy of increased documentation. In the same vein, Löfdahl and Pérez Prieto (2009a) have stressed how teachers describe traditional activities in new ways through documentation. I have described how teachers use goals in the national curriculum and experiences of Reggio Emilia to involve parents and build up professional trust (Löfgren, 2014). Löfdahl (2014) shows that, in their work with parental letters, preschool teachers balance professional strategies of being close and yet keeping at a distance from parents. This approach enables descriptions of professionalism as a matter of both personal experiences and preferences as well as a result of an agenda based on external reviews and accountability. The professional strategies I discuss in this article are regarded as results from the analysis on how teachers have dealt with a policy of increased documentation based on ideas of accountability. However, this policy is not clear about what should be documented or how it should be done, which opens for different professional strategies and ways of ‘doing professionalism’.

Institutional narratives and policy interpretations

This article uses theories of institutional narratives as a way of investigating how the teachers position themselves as professionals in relation to the preschool as an institution. These narratives help members of institutions to arrange and organize their activities and reflect on their circumstances (Law, 1994: 50). What is told about an institution within an institution is expressed through the repertoire of stories that exist within the institution. When institutional narratives are told, or referred to, evaluative points about the basic premises of the institution such as care, learning or fostering in the case of preschool are repeated. Simultaneously, the different angles given to a narrative depend on the situation of the institution and the intentions of the narrator. Institutional narratives are both retrospective and prospective and construct breaks and continuities within the institution’s history. They are used as a means to govern the institution where policy makers, senior representatives and other members highlight their points of views and ascribe them meaning (Linde, 2009). The telling of institutional narratives is a ‘rhetorical mode of discourse, and is a part of the work of knowledge management in organisations’ (Ball et al., 2012: 51).

Narratives in institutions serve as ordering principles that can have either a heroic or an evolutionary character (Law, 1994; Linde, 2009). This study deals with the evolutionary narratives that describe incremental changes and new additions in the past as part of a rational development of the Swedish preschool. Discontinuities and individual efforts are downplayed in these narratives. For example, potential inconsistencies between care and learning assignments in preschool are not made an issue in the data. Evolutionary narratives are told in and speak about a certain social and cultural context that is shaped within an institution. Cultural ‘bits and pieces’ (Law, 1994: 52) are shaped and assembled in certain ways so that individuals can take advantage of them and shape their professional strategies. In this case, the references to a narrative of learning confirm that the work with documentation have been handled in a manner that is consistent with how ‘we usually do it’ because ‘we have done similar things before’ (Linde, 2009). The narrator quotes, refers to or uses the same moral values as the institutional narratives to show solidarity with their own past or to emphasize how they have developed rationally as a response to (policy) changes.

In the teachers’ stories about documentary work, policy is interpreted and enacted (Ball et al., 2012). Teachers’ own interpretations of the reform are significant in finding out what is held as a priority and what is downplayed. These include ideas on what content that should be included in the documents, how it is done and what it is used for (Ball et al., 2012). These interpretations are influenced not only by policy documents but also by the institutional narratives and stories shaped by the teachers. The institutional narrative of learning is told in documents such as the national curriculum and in historical accounts. However, it is also re-told or referred to by the teachers when they talk about documentation. In this study, the teachers’ references to learning are regarded as fragments of an institutional narrative of learning with a long history in Swedish preschool. Since the post-war expansion of Swedish childcare and particularly after 1968, when the concept of ‘preschool’ was introduced, narratives of a learning departing from children’s needs have lived side by side with ideas of externally articulated learning goals (Dahlberg and Lenz Taguchi, 1994). For a long time, children’s right to learn on their own premises was stressed. However, the growing interest in evaluations tends to redirect the interest to narratives of learning outcomes that are more future-oriented and predefined. Fragments of these narratives guide the teachers when they interpret what should be documented and how it should be done and allows them to ‘do professionalism’ in their own way.

Learning in Swedish preschool and national policy documents

There are indications of an educationalization process in Swedish preschool. Since the last decades of the 20th century, activities in preschool have became more focused on preparing children for school by offering educational efforts to strengthen children’s skills in school subjects (Skolinspektionen, 2012). In 1996, Swedish preschool became a part of the national school system, organized under the Ministry of Education and Research. Furthermore, the use of different tests for the assessment of individual children’s learning, especially regarding their linguistic abilities, has increased (Skolverket, 2010). However, in the curriculum, it is stressed that documentation and evaluation are not about the children’s performances but about the quality of the preschool. The documentation should gather knowledge about how the quality in preschool ‘can be developed so that each child receives the best possible conditions for learning and development’ (Lpfö 98, 2010: 14). The preface to the curriculum explicitly says, ‘In the pre-school the outcome of the individual child will not be formally assessed in terms of grades and evaluation’ (Lpfö 98, 2010: 4). But the curriculum also states learning goals for each child that preschools are supposed to strive for in, for example, maths and language.

However, these ideas of school readiness that favour a ‘school-kind of learning’ in preschool are debated, and ideas about other kinds of learning have been suggested. The agenda of preparing preschool children for school has been criticized for producing ‘a poor child in need of preparation’ rather than ‘a rich child capable of learning from birth’ (Dahlberg et al., 1999: 83). I argue that this link to the discourse of lifelong learning further strengthens the position given to learning in Swedish preschool, but in a somewhat different way. Significant for the learning involved here is that it is considered a co-construction that recognizes the children’s earlier knowledge and experiences and thus differs from the ‘school-kind of learning’ that departs from and is defined by externally specified learning goals. This view on learning in preschool is also stressed in a popular method book on pedagogical documentation, where it is suggested that preschool is a place for a common learning between children and teachers, a learning that departs from but also challenges the children’s knowledge (Åberg and Lenz Taguchi, 2005). Furthermore, in recent years it has been argued that the expanding practice of tests and increased focus on learning in preschool contribute to constructions of preschool children who are quite similar to children in school (Halldén, 2011; Skolverket, 2010). The wide flora of tests have been criticized for a lack of scientific foundation and for being too focused on individual children’s performances in a way that sometimes is in conflict with the intentions in the national curriculum (Skolverket, 2010: 215). I consider this worry as a concern that the tests direct the interest towards the child’s performances, rather than to his or her abilities.

In sum, I argue that a major part of the worry and critique of the educationalization tendencies described here is that it privileges a ‘school-kind of learning’ in Swedish preschool. As an alternative to this development stands a vision of a ‘preschool-kind of learning’ that typically is anchored in the national curriculum and departs from what the children already know. This kind of learning should not be assessed in terms of performances but addressed in terms of the quality of the preschool’s abilities to support the development of each child.

Method

The analyses in this study are based on narrative data collected through life history interviews (Goodson and Sikes, 2001; Mishler, 1999). The interviews had a character of ‘conversations’ with the intent to capture the preschool teachers’ experiences of documentation in preschool. The teachers’ stories about themselves and their experiences of documentation provide data about the use of documentation in Swedish preschools from a teacher’s point of view.

Open-ended questions were asked about the interviewees’ personal and professional history and their present work that focused on their experiences of documentation. The questions departed from a broad definition of the concept of documentation, including everything that the teachers themselves defined as work with documentation. The forms of documentation included in the data are described here in short. Quality reports, activity plans and documents of commitment are mainly tasks for the preschool managers and are usually made public in official homepages and reports. Wall-documentation is when teachers collect pictures or take photographs and exhibit them for parents and children, often accompanied by a quote from a goal taken from the national curriculum. Pedagogical documentation is a certain form for documenting children’s activities with roots in the Reggio Emilia philosophy. The method is common in the data and is taught in certain courses and described in the literature (e.g. Åberg and Lenz Taguchi, 2005). Triple logs are a method based on a template that serves to facilitate teachers’ systematic common reflections on activities in preschool. Individual performance reviews and portfolios are focused on individual children’s development and learning. Often, examples of children’s work are collected in a binder.

Sample and access

The sample provides examples of how documentation is handled by teachers in different preschools. These examples serve as arguments from a teacher’s perspective towards the discussion on the shaping of the preschool teaching profession. Between the years 2012 and 2013, I conducted 12 interviews with 17 preschool teachers in seven preschool settings in two mid-sized towns in central Sweden. All interviews were conducted at the preschools where the teachers were working. For four of the interviews, two preschool teachers were present, and for the others, one teacher was present at the time. The interviews lasted between 0.45 and 2.04 hours. Altogether, the total time of the interviews was 18.45 hours. Four of the preschools were ’ordinary’ community preschools with no specific profile. One was a less regulated ’independent’ community preschool with a Reggio Emilia profile. Two of the preschools were parent cooperatives, and one of them had a Reggio Emilia profile.

The participating teachers were chosen on a voluntary basis. The preschool managers were contacted and they informed their staff about the project. I then contacted all the teachers who expressed an interest in participating. I gave them information about the project and explained the practical and ethical terms of participation. All of the teachers agreed to participate, and no one chose to withdraw.

Analytical procedures

All interviews were recorded and fully transcribed. An initial analysis of all transcribed interviews drew attention to the frequent references to a narrative about learning in preschool. A well-developed version of this narrative is articulated in the national curriculum (Lpfö 98, 2010), but the versions, or fragments, of it that are focused on in this article are found in the teachers’ references to it in their talk of documentation. A systematic screening for stories about documentation with references to learning resulted in a 45-page document with quotes that were analysed in detail. The screening was conducted as I read all the transcripts several times and marked all sequences that referred to learning. In the following analyses, the selected sequences of the transcript were coded regarding the content of what the teachers said and organized into themes that gave different perspectives contributing to answer the questions in the article. In this analysis, three themes emerged and they are presented as follows.

Learning in preschool teachers’ talk about documentation

The first theme, Children’s learning and the goals in the national curriculum, focuses on how the teachers grapple with ambiguities regarding the policy of increased documentation in accordance with the curriculum, what goals are to be prioritized and how this should be done in practice. Clearly, there is ambivalence between documenting a kind of learning that departs from the children’s initiative and documenting the learning goals stated in the curriculum. The second theme, Documentation of learning as a professional strategy, illustrates how the teachers deal with the ambivalence of what learning to document mainly through the use of pedagogical documentation. The teachers express how they try to document a ‘preschool-kind of learning’ that highlights the children’s interests and how they aim to challenge children’s learning in collaboration with their colleagues. Finally, the theme Teachers as learners that ‘do professionalism’ stresses the teachers’ position as learners who, in the interplay with the children and each other, learn to develop their skills as documenting and reflective teachers.

Children’s learning and the goals in the national curriculum

It is evident that the preschool teachers are eager to translate the curriculum goals and enact them in practice. The goals are used in the negotiations with parents about legitimacy and trust in relation to competing discourses of professionalism (Löfgren, 2014). But there is no consensus of how the goals should be interpreted or prioritized in the work with documentation; this is done differently in different contexts. When the national curriculum was revised in 2010, the teachers said that it became common to quote with reference to specified goals as a way to make children’s learning and their own pedagogical work visible to the parents and to themselves:

Many times I can feel the need to show, to justify our working methods to the parents […] ‘this is what we actually do’ […] continuously … on the document … the message board out there where we put up what we have done and … include the goals.

The important thing in this documentation is to make visible to the parents that the teachers work in accordance with the goals in the curriculum. However, in many of the preschools, the teachers express dissatisfaction with this practice partly because parents do not pay attention to wall-documentations and partly because it does not help either teachers or children to reflect on the learning documented:

[It] was much photos of ‘Charlie and Lisa bikes’ and a little subtitle underneath, […] while we now have thought it to be more reflections, more feedback to the children, the children should be included, and reflect, […] giving back to the parents.

In the teachers’ talk about wall-documentation, children who learn in line with the objectives in the curriculum are stressed, not the children learning in a way that departs from their own interests. However, the idea that activities in preschool should depart from the children’s initiative, rather than from the teachers’ initiatives, is well represented in the data and further complicates the teachers’ planning of what goals should be addressed:

We have not decided on any goals before [an activity] … ‘This is what we are going to work with’ … Instead we try to ensure that all the goals, or as many as possible, will be included in the activities.

In this quote, it is clear that it is the children’s activities that are privileged and that the external goals are of a lower priority. Furthermore, it is evident in the data that the teachers struggle with knowing how to document learning in group activities as well as individual children’s learning in ways that are different from what is done in school. Different kinds of content of documentation are stressed in different preschools, focusing on, for example, individual development, individual learning, group learning and activities in preschool. Documenting an individual child’s physical and cognitive development is a tradition in Swedish preschools that has been downplayed in recent policy. However, this rest of the past policy is represented in the data. One teacher talks enthusiastically about how she and the children collect paintings and pictures in a binder that they can use as a reminder of how they have developed. Other teachers spoke about how they gather things that children have made to show at the performance appraisals with parents. They also use portfolios to highlight development (e.g. a yearly painting of a foot to see how it grows). Generally, the teachers do not document individual children’s development, but some gave examples of how they still do it.

It is evident that the teachers are uncertain about how their work with documentation should work both as a way to involve the children in a process of reflecting on their own learning and as a means to measure goal fulfilment and meet demands on accountability. No ‘best practice’ has developed, and old traditions on how to use documentation (e.g. portfolio, wall-documentation) mixes with the recommendations (e.g. pedagogical documentation) supported from the authorities (Skolinspektionen, 2012; Skolverket, 2012). The teachers use their own experiences and education, such as Montessori, aesthetic learning and drama, in creative ways when dealing with the policy of documentation.

In summary, the teachers expressed an eagerness to use documentation as a way to ensure that they work towards the goals stated in the national curriculum and as a way to focus on the learning involved in the children’s interests, but they were uncertain about how this could be done. I argue that the teachers’ different interpretations of what should be documented are a result of changing and even contradictory education policies that stress different aspects of learning. The teachers express an ambivalence in policies of documenting a ‘school-kind of learning’ departing from external goals or of documenting a ‘preschool-kind of learning’ departing from the children’s interests.

The documentation of learning as a professional strategy

A major finding, associated with this ambivalence, in the study is that most teachers expressed how hard it was to deal with the dilemma of documenting learning without assessing the individuals. This is an issue stressed in the curriculum. In the talk of documentation, the teacher’s uncertainty and the ambivalence in policies are met with ideas, suggestions and sometimes by demands for the use of pedagogical documentation. In the quotes about pedagogical documentation, the institutional narrative of learning in terms of a ‘preschool-kind of learning’ that departs from the children’s interests is privileged. Most teachers agreed on the interpretation of policy, that they should not assess individual’s learning in any terms but that they should document learning in other ways. This dilemma raises questions such as the following: Can I document a child’s learning without assessing it? Should I document all children’s individual learning processes – how? Answers to these types of questions were often provided with references to Reggio Emilia pedagogy and to pedagogical documentation. Many teachers in the study said that they had attended, or hoped to attend, courses in this technique:

Kennedy is a trained pedagogista and in the book she writes about her work towards change, inspired by Reggio Emilia, and so we had this book ‘A listening pedagogics’ with Ann Åberg and we listened to Ann Åberg’s lecture.

Many teachers described pedagogical documentation as a form of documentation that enables them to be attentive to children’s initiatives while also to the curriculum goals. Some teachers have attended courses in this method, and representatives frequently hold lectures for the teachers and write books on the subject:

Anne Åberg has written a book … the one you know … and we felt that this approach is something that we are passionate about … that we capture children’s interests and … and depart from that.

However, as in these quotes, the details of how the pedagogical documentation was conducted were never fully elaborated. There are frequent quotes in the data that suggest that their work with pedagogical documentation helps them to ‘capture children’s interests … and depart from there’. Stressing a ‘preschool-kind of learning’ in the work with and talking about pedagogical documentation in preschool stand out as a professional strategy to deal with the ambivalence in policy of what and how to document.

Teachers as learners who ‘do professionalism’

When asked to develop how the teachers work with documentation, they refer to courses they have attended and to themselves as learners. That kind of reasoning also refers to the institutional narrative of learning, but its focus is not about children’s learning processes but about teachers who learn about their own work. The protagonists in the stories that converge within this theme are the preschool teachers. They address the institutional narrative of learning as a way to position themselves and the children as learners who deal with the work with documentation. I interpret what the teachers have said both as an expression of ontological insecurity (Osgood, 2012; Vincent and Ball, 2006) and as a way to ‘do professionalism’ and deal with a discourse characterized by accountability (Löfdahl, 2014; Löfgren, 2014)

The ontological insecurity is reflected in many of the teachers’ stories of how they deal with documentation. They explicitly expressed that the wide array of documentation confuses them. Documentation requirements are often described as in flux, as illustrated in this quote:

We will document… and evaluate an activity … the activities, not the children but the activity […]. I think many … many [teachers] thought that it was very difficult and after all this you feel … well, that one should analyse and document and show up everything for everyone else. And … but one thinks that, you think that it is for the department’s sake and that it should be developed … that you should not have … every little child, but that it is ‘what do our activities offer to provide development for the child’ … Then it’s a bit easier. But since we have not yet finished this year yet, that is why we will try to find out a little what … different documentation paths … we will find. All departments have a little … their own ways, and we will compile it this spring … here and see … what the various tips and tricks.

It seems clear that the policy of increased documentation poses problems that teachers have to solve in local contexts and that the interpretation (Ball et al., 2012) of the documentation policy is met with some concern. There is a need for ‘various tips and tricks’. The teachers are in the middle of a learning process. Another teacher expressed her insecurity when talking about how they try to make each child’s learning process visible, which is required in order to get certified in the local quality system:

Here we are cornered in that it is a portfolio, maybe there are better tools, or? As we will highlight each child’s learning processes, visualize, must visualize it for the child. If it is about visualising it for parents or for ourselves then maybe this can be done verbally through talking to them, but with the child it does not become as clear. And through wall-documentation? That every child should see a learning process in a wall-documentation is not that easy.

The traditional forms of documentation for preschool are not sufficient, and later in the interview, the teacher expressed an urge to learn more about pedagogical documentation. But even in preschools where they have worked with pedagogical documentation for a long time, the teachers expressed insecurity around this method:

But we, I, we are not there yet. Right now we are documenting what we do in our groups, […] and what the children are interested in. […] There is nothing that I have been able to seize on to elaborate on, so I think that’s really tough. […] I mean if not every [child] is interested in what we are doing, but everyone is not supposed to be either, then how am I supposed to engage the others? They also have to learn something. I have to capture their learning as well, so […], it will probably take a while, a good while before you have it and you can make it work.

I argue that the teachers deal with uncertainty on what and how to document by describing themselves as still learning about this work. Positioning themselves as learners by referring to the institutional narrative of learning thus stands out as a way to ‘do professionalism’ in the teachers’ talk of their work with documentation. This produces performative images of the teachers as intimately involved in the process of learning and actors who ‘do professionalism’ in a way that cannot yet be evaluated. As learners, they cannot yet be held fully accountable for what is documented and of how the documentation is conducted. The agenda of accountability is postponed. Another example of how the emphasis shifted from the children’s to the teachers’ learning was in a story where a teacher has to deal with the contradicting policies of documentation either to ensure that children are prepared for school or through a way that departs from children’s interest. She concludes the story by talking about why pedagogical documentation and specifically ‘triple logs’ are used:

To gain more understanding of what it is we are doing and why, how we do it, and to ensure we have time for reflection in the team. This is of course precisely why we use the pedagogical documentation. It is an evaluation that allows one to learn pretty much.

Pedagogical documentation is described as something that she needs to learn more about and is considered a promising tool for professional learning. As a ‘learner’, she avoids or postpones being held accountable for what kind of learning is documented. This point is further illustrated in following story about pedagogical documentation told by two preschool teachers in a high-profile Reggio Emilia preschool. They say that they take turns presenting various documentations every week and they analyse it with their colleagues. The documentation can be a photograph, a tape/video recording or a quote from a child that is presented without any further comments from the presenting teacher. After a short individual reflection, the colleagues compare their reflections and discuss the purpose of the documentation. They also adopt different perspectives such as gender, language or mathematics. The teachers concluded their story like this:

The idea is to deepen your reflection and awareness of your pedagogical approach […] how you interact with the children, what is your pedagogical attitude and the purpose of what you do. […] And perhaps above all, it helps reflect on children’s learning processes. What do they focus on? […] What […] do they learn? What are their thoughts on what they learn? […] We are in the starting blocks there.

In this story, the teachers speak about how they interpret and deal with the new documentation policy, as learners, by referring to the narrative of learning. They learn to reflect on their pedagogical approach, attitudes, purposes, their interactions with children and the children’s learning processes. The teachers are learning about how to work with documentation. It is a never ending process. The references to the narrative of learning serve as a Russian doll metaphor with many layers that need to be learned and reflected on. These new insights can be important bits and pieces in the process of ‘doing professionalism’. The teachers talk about documentation, guided by the institutional narrative of learning, which changes the focus from results to processes.

Conclusion

In this study, I have shown that the teachers frequently refer to the institutional narrative of learning in different ways when they talk about documentation in preschool. Consequently, it seems to ‘pay off’ professionally for preschool teachers to talk about learning when interpreting the policy of increased documentation. The lifelong learning agenda further highlights the importance of learning in preschool (Dahlberg et al., 1999).

Considering the educationalization of preschool, these results are not surprising (Kagan and Kauerz, 2007). Clearly, there are indications of a process of educationalization that emphasizes standards-based education and accountability in Swedish preschool. I argue that, for example, the incorporation of preschool in the national school system, the increased focus on school readiness and school subjects in the national curriculum and the extended testing practice in preschool contribute to increased pressure on preschool teachers to feel accountable for children’s learning outcomes in terms of a ‘school of learning’. However, in the data there is some resistance towards this agenda because the teachers refer to the institutional narrative of learning in ways that favour what I in this article have referred to as a ‘preschool-kind of learning’ based on the children’s interests rather than on external goals. The results in this article suggest that the teachers’ frequent references to the institutional narrative of learning in terms of a ‘preschool-kind of learning’ serve as a professional strategy that helps the teachers feel secure when responding to demands for quality control and goal fulfilment. The teachers develop ideas about a ‘preschool-kind of learning’, with influences from the national curriculum and from ideas of pedagogical documentation that depart from children’s interests and differ from a ‘school-kind of learning’. Typically, this learning is not measured as learning outcomes and in grades. Instead, learning processes and children’s reflections on their learning are in focus, and the learning involved in the group activities is more stressed than the learning of individuals. These distinctions clearly separate the preschool teaching profession from the teaching profession in schools.

However, there are ambiguities in the policy of increased documentation in preschool concerning what should be documented and how the documentation should be conducted that the teachers have to overcome. Furthermore, there is ambivalence in the teachers’ interpretations of policy. Ideas that documentation is mainly a tool for assisting the children to learn and develop compete with ideas based on an agenda of accountability, where the teachers are made responsible for performances in the preschool. The answer to these ambiguities and ambivalences provided by the teachers also refers to the institutional narrative of learning. It is about teachers learning how to conduct the work with documentation in line with the national curriculum, mainly through the use of pedagogical documentation. In contrast to research on the teaching profession that emphasizes emotions as the major trait of professionalism in preschool (Osgood, 2012), I argue that this study supports descriptions of teachers who are interested in their own learning as a major aspect of being a professional. The certain way of ‘doing professionalism’ that emerges in the analysis is about teachers who describe themselves as also being learners who are in a state of becoming more professional through their increased work with documentation. They expressed having a more intense focus on children’s interactions and learning and described themselves as in a state of becoming more attentive and reflexive as professionals. Simultaneously, I argue that this way of ‘doing professionalism’ deals with the policy based on accountability. As learners, the teachers cannot be held fully accountable, but they can still claim that they do their job in a professional way. This use of the institutional narrative of learning serves as a way to ‘do professionalism’ ‘in becoming’ that makes it possible to deal with the contradictions in policies on what to include in the documentations and how to conduct the documentation while also providing an opportunity to create professional security within a discourse of professionalism framed by ideas of accountability. By referring to the institutional narrative of learning and directing it at themselves, they have created opportunities to interpret and enact the policy of increased documentation in ways that postpone the ontological insecurity and allow for a professional agency here and now.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

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