Introduction

In 2020, at the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic started, a group of Scandinavian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) researchers began conducting regular video seminars. In our discussions, a common interest emerged: the ambition to conduct research in close collaboration with ECEC personnel. This was hard to achieve at the time, due to the pandemic, but it gave us time to reflect. The methodological tradition we could all relate to is based on two overlapping approaches: praxis-related research and developmental research. We could see that we partly deviated from the established knowledge and norms in the field since our focus differed from that of the majority of research in the field, being on ECEC (i.e. preschool), while in educational research the term practice typically alludes to other forms of education – and specifically school. We found that there is a significant difference in relation to ECEC research that has to be considered and further examined. This will have a substantial impact on the concepts that are used in this tradition.

With this volume (Wallerstedt et al., this volume), we aim to fill this gap in the methodological literature. We have collected experiences from Scandinavian research in ECEC to identify critical areas of consideration when conducting projects in collaboration between teachers and researchers. In this first chapter, we will introduce some key references in the development and praxis-related methodology. Thereafter, we will introduce the challenges and ‘lessons learned’ that will be described in the chapters of this volume’s second section. Eight examples of research projects are provided. We can see that many denotations are used in the different chapters to describe the methods used, for instance, development projects or studies (Kultti, this volume, Chap. 9; Pramling Samuelsson, this volume, Chap. 2), research and innovation project (Lagerlöf, this volume, Chap. 8), inquiry-based research and professional development programme (Ødegaard et al., this volume, Chap. 5), and action research approach (Brooks et al., this volume, Chap. 7). Despite these differences, they all fit the criteria of praxis-related research by focusing on problems that are experienced in preschool, even if the process of formulating these problems differs. Sometimes it is the preschool that initiates contact with academia (e.g. Kultti, this volume, Chap. 9; Wallerstedt, this volume, Chap. 4), while other times it is the researchers who consider it important to collaborate with preschools (e.g. Pramling Samuelsson, this volume, Chap. 2; Björklund & Palmér, this volume, Chap. 3). While all the described projects aim to improve preschool practice, they also take on social problems in a broader sense (e.g. Åkerblom, this volume, Chap. 6; Brooks et al., this volume, Chap. 7). They are all collaborative projects in which participants from preschools and participants from academia (i.e., researchers) work together, but often in a more explorative way, compared to other studies within the development and praxis-related research tradition. In the third and final section of the volume, three chapters summarise and meta-comment on the presented examples (as presented in Part II of the volume), on both theoretical and pragmatic levels.

Aiming for a Better Society: Two Related Research Approaches

Mattsson and Kemmis (2007) describe praxis-related research as being characterised by a focus on ‘overcoming human suffering, injustice and oppression’ (p. 187). There is a strong ideological basis that can be traced to philosophers like Aristotle and his idea of putting ‘knowledge into practice’ and Marx, who wanted a change to society that could only become reality with the broad participation of different actors and through collective agency. Lewin, who is said to have been the first action researcher back in the 1940s, claimed that ‘research that produces nothing but books will not suffice’ (1946, p. 35, cited in Mattsson & Kemmis, 2007, p. 187). Hence, not only does praxis-related research aim to make a scientific contribution, its quality should also be measured in terms of its impact on practice (preschools, schools, or other professional domains). This change will be realised through a close collaboration between those responsible for the scientific contribution (researchers) and those responsible for the practice in focus for development (teachers). As Mattsson and Kemmis describe: ‘Researchers and practitioners may be thought of as acting on different fields, but each may try to enter the other’s province of meaning. Where the fields overlap, there is an element of uncertainty about what is to be understood and to be done from two different perspectives’ (p. 188) (see also Pramling & Peterson, this volume, Chap. 10). It is in the communicative space of this uncertainty where praxis-related research can result in both new scientific knowledge and the development of practices. An interactive process is a signature of this kind of research. Another typical aspect is that the researcher may take on the role of a ‘pedagogue or facilitator, inventing and shaping research methods by which co-researchers and ordinary people can come to participate in the research activity’ (ibid.). Praxis-related research is an umbrella term for many kinds of research methods that have these aspects in common, of which action-based research is only one example.

The other approach that serves as a foundation for our research tradition, development research (van den Akker, 1999), is also characterised by a will for change, but, compared to the discourse articulated in praxis-related research, the change to be addressed often lies on a more practical level. One salient motive of development researchers is a wish to avoid the problems of ‘traditional’ research, that is, that the research results in descriptive knowledge that does not lead to solutions to practical problems. The ambition with development research is instead to contribute useful results. Note that in the literature this is often described as a question of either/or (descriptive knowledge vs. useful results) rather than of both/and. Another motive is the desire to recognise the complexity of educational ‘reality’, so that all its dimensions are embraced already in the research phase, not to be laid aside until results are to be applied in classrooms. Development research, typically conducted in collaboration with teachers or other practitioners, consists of a cyclic or spiral design, and its outcomes are formulated as ‘design principles’. Ideally, the research presents a thick description of the process, the context, and the theoretical propositions. This is what creates ecological validity and enables the reader to estimate possible transfer from the conducted project to other situations. Generalisation in development research cannot be based on statistical techniques, but must instead be dependent on what van den Akker calls ‘“analytical” forms of generalization’ (p. 12).

Conceptual Confusions when Doing Research in Collaboration with (Pre)school Personnel

In 2020, the editorial board of the journal Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige (English: pedagogical research in Sweden) invited Nordic scholars to debate what could be described as an ongoing paradigm shift in educational research. The new dominating tendency, according to the editors, is practice-near research. This term is not commonly used internationally, but in our interpretation it is analogous to praxis-related and development research, as described above. We consider the debate to be of great interest for more general methodological discussions, including the work rendered in the present volume, since what all the authors deal with is research conducted in close collaboration with the personnel of preschools (note that we avoid using the term ‘practitioners’, as this could be interpreted as their standing in contrast to researchers. Researchers are also practitioners, just within a different practice, namely, academia).

Two contributors to the Nordic debate, Serder and Malmström (2020), depict a background for practice-near research from a Swedish perspective. They highlight three alternative denominations: praxis-near research (focusing on knowledge formation that takes place in schools, but teachers’ involvement is not necessarily central); practice-near research (the dominant term in Swedish policy documents since 2010, emphasising teachers’ participation in research projects); and practice-developing research. The last term was introduced in a report by the Swedish Government (SOU, 2018, p. 19) as an alternative term, denoting the developing aim of research (cf. development research). The results of this kind of research should be of direct use in school practices.

Yet another term is suggested in the debate by Nilholm (2020), who raises criticism regarding two aspects embedded in the evolvement of ‘practice-near’ research. The first is that it follows the line of effectiveness, a trend that has come to dominate the public debate about school. A risk with this view is that research will focus only on a limited scope, namely, the incentive to contribute to pupils’ knowledge achievements. He claims that researchers should instead broaden their interest to include the school’s overarching function in society and thus refer to ‘task-relevant research’ rather than ‘practice-near research’. The second criticism Nilholm raises is the separation of theory and practice that is maintained by the term. This point has also been a matter of concern for the authors of this volume. Claiming that research is ‘near’ practice indicates that theory is typically developed in academia with no connection to practice and that practice is conducted without theory (Nilholm, 2020). Nilholm points to the fact that research is a form of practice as well. Mattsson and Kemmis draw a similar conclusion: ‘As practising scientists know, knowledge of a field includes more than knowledge about the objects of the field. Knowledge of the field includes knowledge of the craft of science’ (p. 22). Hence, carrying out research is as practical as teaching – it is a craft.

It is not only the separation of theory from practice that is problematic; so is the potential conflict between educational research and educational practice. This relationship has been discussed since education became an academic field of study (Biesta, 2007). Already in the 1800s, some academics argued for a clear line of demarcation between practice and research so that teachers would not be overwhelmed. This has been a persistent question, since it has been assumed that there is a gap between the two. Usually, this gap is dealt with in a descriptive manner (how it is) or a normative manner (how it should be).

Biesta (2007) criticises the fact that the word research is often used indiscriminately, especially so when it comes to outcomes of research, as it is often taken for granted that knowledge is the product of all educational research and more specifically the kind of knowledge that could be used in educational practices. Biesta (2007) also highlights the issue that knowledge might be used in different ways regarding the gap between research and educational practice, referring to Dutch studies that were performed in the 1980s. In these studies, researchers demonstrated that there are mainly two ways that research can inform practice – as one of two positions: playing (1) a technical role, instrumental knowledge, what works, and ‘do this and this will happen’, or (2) a cultural role, providing different interpretations and understandings of educational practice, to help practitioners get new perspectives by changing their way of looking at their practice, which can change their ways of understanding problems and improve their practice.

Biesta’s distinction clarifies that it is not only the technical role that is useful for educational practice, even though this is the most common way of doing research while the cultural role often goes unnoticed. He states that if researchers open for the cultural role, many perceived problems, and the gap would dissolve. He asks whether educational research can in fact produce technical knowledge, since although it presupposes that there are causal links between activities and outcomes, this is not the case. Biesta’s (2007) final point is that, while bridging the gap is generally a good thing, it can also blur the distinction between researchers and practitioners and obscure the fact that the two bring different expertise to the field. He highlights the importance that the two roles be clearly defined so that researcher and practitioner can keep their critical distance. Otherwise, for example, issues may arise when researchers need to present critical or negative results.

Returning to Nilholm (2020) and his suggested term – task-relevant research – this can also help solve another potential conflict, between basic science, which he refers to as ‘curiosity research’, and the educational counterpart to clinical research in medicine. He writes that both kinds of research need to be task-relevant. Every educational researcher must deal with the political framework of the educational system, in one way or another.

To summarise the discussion so far, we can see that whatever term is used, there is a methodological approach that is characterised by (i) a focus on problems that are experienced in schools, (ii) an aim to improve school practice (or improving society in a broader sense), and (iii) what are referred to as the practitioners of schools (teachers, principals, or other actors) which are involved in the research process to some extent. We can also see that there are recurring problems to deal with when applying this research methodology. The first concerns the usefulness of the research and the balance between an ambition to develop practice and to contribute basic scientific knowledge. The second problem is related to the first and concerns the question of who can produce knowledge: is it only the researchers (working with theory), or is the knowledge that is elaborated in practice likewise valid (practice is also theory)? We will return to these issues in the last part of this chapter, but first we will take a closer look at the different contributions by the authors of this volume.

When the Practice Referred to Is Preschool: Reflections from the Chapters

When discussing teachers’ involvement in research, we clearly see that examples often concern how teachers participate in the design and implementation of interventions. Given the discourse of effectivity (cf. Nilholm, 2020), these interventions often deal with specific teaching problems, for example, how to teach about subject x, in order to make the pupil grasp the content of y (e.g. Jitendra, 2005), that is, to find the best – or rather, most effective – way of teaching. When we involve preschool teachers in our studies, we have a different kind of task to consider and relate to (cf. Nilholm, 2020). Curricula for ECEC in the Scandinavian countries, as seen in the examples in this volume, are not divided into subjects but are of a more thematic character. For example, the Swedish curriculum does not present goals to be achieved by children in preschool, and the institutional task is not to conduct evaluations of children’s knowledge achievements. When the praxis-related research approach emerged in the Scandinavian countries, as described in the chapter by Pramling Samuelsson (this volume, Chap. 2), there was no curriculum at all yet. The examples of projects in this volume largely address problems that are of a broad character. This also likely affects what the teachers’ role in the projects comes to be. There are often no clearly defined interventions to be designed; the developments to be tried out are more like new approaches, not necessarily specified tasks or teaching procedures. If there are more specified interventions, such as those reported in Björklund and Palmér’s (this volume, Chap. 3) chapter on a project involving children’s learning in mathematics, there is still a strong focus on an openness to the children’s perspectives and initiatives in the procedures. Pramling Samuelsson’s (this volume, Chap. 2) project aimed to determine whether a metacognitive approach to children’s learning supported children’s sensemaking in preschool. Another example is Kultti’s (this volume, Chap. 9) project, which aimed to decrease differences in young children’s living conditions. In the project, participants wanted to create knowledge about teaching and learning, as well as home-preschool collaboration, in multilingual preschool contexts. This project, as well as Åkerblom’s (this volume, Chap. 6) action research project aimed at exploring the conditions for ECE in a migrating world, has clear connotations to typically praxis-related aims (Mattsson & Kemmis, 2007) that strive for an equal society. Åkerblom (this volume, Chap. 6) describes that there are migration processes and linguistic diversity that characterise our time and societies. Brooks et al. (this volume, Chap. 7) address another contemporary societal challenge, namely, how educators can make sense of present complex demands that they enhance their digital competence to improve the technological integration in their everyday educational activities.

What we find stands out in the projects reported here, which are all conducted with preschools, is that theoretical interests, typical of basic science, are often salient. This does not exclude an interest in the development of practice, articulated at the same time. We can see it, for example, in Björklund and Palmér’s (this volume, Chap. 3) study when they explicitly state both a theoretically and empirically grounded interest in how children develop numerical skills. Another example can be found in Wallerstedt’s chapter (this volume, Chap. 4), which describes a project aiming to develop, through empirical and theoretical work, a didaktik for preschool, that is, a theory. One could say that what the collaboration with teachers in the projects often concerns is a common interest in children’s learning, development, and well-being, rather than simply teaching and working methods for preschool.

Even if we can see interesting and fruitful models of collaborative work throughout the projects presented in the next section, there will be obstacles that we can learn from. We can also conclude that the long-standing question of what kind of knowledge about school practices is recognised and who is legitimised to produce it (the theory-practice divide) is still alive, even in our projects (see also the discussions in Part III by Pramling & Peterson, this volume, Chap. 10, and by Pramling & Wallerstedt, this volume, Chap. 12). It is worth noting that there are more actors to be found in this battle, not least the tech industry today, as will be illustrated in Lagerlöf’s chapter (this volume, Chap. 8).

The Challenges of Collaboration Projects

There are many potential benefits of realising collaboration projects in ECEC, such as the prospect of creating mutually beneficial conditions for the involved partners to develop a deeper understanding and greater knowledge around a specific area of ECEC. Nevertheless, there are also many challenges that can stand in the way of the successful implementation, execution, and completion of a project. Some of these challenges can possibly be avoided in the planning phase by creating spaces for communication and dialogue between the partners in the project, while other challenges cannot be predicted and require researchers and teachers to be flexible and creative.

Based on the collective experiences described in the chapters of this volume, several challenges are addressed: (i) agenda-setting and expectation management, (ii) mutual trust and shared understanding, (iii) organisational challenges, and (iv) managing the unpredictable. Many of these challenges are echoes of what has previously been voiced in the literature on collaborative projects, but note that all examples presented here are grounded in ECEC settings.

Agenda-Setting and Expectation Management

A common issue in collaboration projects is when researchers and teachers, either partly or entirely, have different goals and agendas in the project and, as a result, have different expectations of what they will achieve with the project (Serder & Malmström, 2020). In the project described by Wallerstedt (this volume, Chap. 4), the researchers’ aim was to generate and share knowledge about a new form of play-responsive didaktik in the context of ECEC. The expressed ambition of the teachers was to attend lectures and conferences, to receive a newsletter, and to be part of a network. Similarly, in Björklund and Palmér (this volume, Chap. 3), the researchers’ goal was to gain knowledge on structures and discourses and to change practice when it came to toddlers’ numerical skills, while the teachers expressed that they expected to develop mathematical methods which, when applied, would facilitate their daily practice. In the project described by Lagerlöf (this volume, Chap. 8), the issue of different expectations and agendas grows even more complicated as commercial actors become involved. This can be explained by the fact that researchers and companies often have contradictory views on children as research objects and different perspectives on learning, but also that the aim of most corporations is to make a profit, which collides with researchers’ intentions to generate impartial knowledge. Having divergent perspectives on goals and potential outcomes can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction among participants. To develop a fruitful collaboration project, there is a need to create arenas for joint agenda-setting, where researchers and teachers (and potentially other actors) can express their expectations for the project.

Mutual Trust and Shared Understanding

Something that has proven to be notoriously challenging is the building of mutual trust in collaboration projects. Although this is an arduous and time-consuming task, it is crucial to let this process take time (Olsson & Brunner Cederlund, 2020). As stated by Kultti (this volume, Chap. 9), to build trust, researchers and teachers need to be engaged in dialogue. It is tempting to assume that there will automatically be a communicative exchange between these two parties simply because they come together in a collaboration project, but this is not always the case (Prøitz, 2020). In the chapters of this volume, two potential pitfalls when it comes to developing mutual trust and shared understanding in a collaboration project will be revealed.

Firstly, when partners lack necessary knowledge about each other’s everyday work, it can be a struggle for them to communicate. Research and preschool are very different practices, and it is difficult to understand the needs of a practice if one is not part of it (Blossing, 2020). For example, teachers do not always understand the mechanisms, purposes, and limitations of the scientific process, which can lead to inflated expectations of what researchers can accomplish in terms of problem-solving. There can, for instance, be expectations from teachers that researchers will deliver ‘the truth’ or provide solutions to complex problems (Hultman, 2021; cf. Pramling & Peterson, this volume, Chap. 10). Likewise, researchers who are not adequately familiar with the objectives of ECEC and the working conditions of early childhood professionals risk focusing on issues that are not significant for practice or not scientifically significant. While it is not possible to eliminate such knowledge gaps, they can be reduced if both parties are willing to share and listen to each other.

Secondly, communication barriers between researchers and teachers can cause communication problems, which could lead to difficulties in building trust (Hermansson & Ahlborg, 2020). These two groups therefore need to develop a common, professional language (Rönnerman, 2020), which can help them communicate to find common theoretical ground in projects and, by extension, to coordinate their perspectives in order to establish sufficient intersubjectivity. This is said to be enabled by creating a ‘third space’, referred to as a non-hierarchical, communicative space where researchers and teachers can engage in dialogue (Passy et al., 2018; Prøitz, 2020). However, it can be questioned whether such a space is theoretically possible. Participants in a dialogue always bring in different experiences and have different knowledge, which undoubtedly creates hierarchical structures to some extent. In their text, Ødegaard, Oen, and Birkeland (this volume, Chap. 5) describe how communicative spaces were created for collective reflection on the epistemological base of a project. Similarly, in the action research project described by Åkerblom (this volume, Chap. 6), the researchers and educators had partially conflicting perspectives on multilingual children’s Swedish language development. In their discussions, the educators implied that they viewed children’s language as lacking since they were not fluent in Swedish. Meanwhile, the researchers would not accept this point of view as valid as multilingualism, from their theoretical point of view, was seen as an asset rather than a deficit. With an intention to bridge this divide, the researchers initiated a dialogic space where they discussed monolingual norms, and one researcher joined in the daily work at the preschool. The measures described above turned out to be successful, in the sense that they were instrumental in building the much-needed mutual trust between the researchers and educators that was decisive for them to communicate openly in the project (Åkerblom, this volume, Chap. 6).

As building trust is significant, it is vital to let this process take time, which can be a problem since most research projects are funded for only a limited time. Therefore, the time aspect needs to be addressed in the project’s initial planning stage. It should not be taken for granted that researchers and teachers will be able to establish sufficient intersubjectivity; instead, they must have a proper chance to engage in continuous dialogue. It is therefore important to create opportunities for them to establish a shared understanding of the project and its objectives. It is also important to plan for network-building at an early stage, to ensure that the knowledge and relationships that develop during the project will outlast the time frame of the funded project. In line with Rönnerman (2020), we argue that it is important for universities to support research groups in forming lasting networks in which the practitioners – in this case, researchers and teachers – can establish trust and create a shared language.

Organisational Challenges

As the chapters of this volume clearly show, organisational challenges are common when conducting a collaboration project. Several of the chapters deal with issues concerning insufficient project leadership, distribution of responsibility, and unclear definition of roles when researchers and teachers collaborate in projects. Leadership backing has proven to be an important factor. Blossing (2020) goes as far as to say that all practice-based research necessitates the participation of local leaders for the project to be relevant for educational practice. Leadership support is not only important for the researcher who is conducting the study; for teachers, it is crucial that they receive appropriate practical and motivational support to be able to participate to their full capacity. Kultti (this volume, Chap. 9) describes a development project that lasted 6 years, in which preschool teachers and preschool directors from six municipalities participated in continuing professional development aimed at improving conditions for children’s well-being and learning. She shows that long-lasting and consistent leadership support was decisive for teachers’ persistence in staying in the project, while insufficient support negatively affected preschool partners’ interest in remaining in it. During the project’s time frame, it became increasingly clear not only that well-defined, internal leadership in the project was essential but also that the need to formalise middle-management positions in the form of at least one appointed coordinator per municipality was crucial for the project’s development and for facilitating shared understanding through dialogue. Kultti (this volume, Chap. 9) adds that it is not enough to encourage the appointment of such positions; they usually have to be formalised in order to be realised.

In several chapters, the authors discuss the definition of roles in collaboration projects and how it can sometimes be unclear what is expected from the partners in a project if this is not explicitly addressed. It is not uncommon to see asymmetric collaborations in which the researchers’ and teachers’ roles are regarded as fixed, with the researcher as the agent of inquiry and the teachers as the objects for analysis (Björklund & Palmér, this volume, Chap. 3). As stated by Lagerlöf (this volume, Chap. 8), when teachers are not allowed to be part of the research design process, important knowledge can be missed. In the chapter by Björklund and Palmér (this volume, Chap. 3), they discuss how researchers and teachers took on interchanging roles in their project, as both ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, and that both perspectives were significant for the development of their project. Like Wallerstedt (this volume, Chap. 4), they also discuss the concept of co-learning agreements (Wagner, 1997), in which researchers and teachers are seen as equally important and responsible when it comes to initiating changes and sharing new knowledge in their respective arenas. However, as pointed out by Wallerstedt (this volume, Chap. 4), even with the best intentions, this is often more easily said than done.

Managing the Unpredictable

Another challenge that is salient in the chapters is the unpredictable process of conducting collaboration projects. Such projects are characteristically ‘unpredictable, mutable, contingent, serendipitous, complex, and challenging’ (Walton et al., 2015, p. 45), and there will always be aspects that researchers and teachers cannot plan for. Ultimately, a collaboration project is what emerges between the participants.

In the study presented in the chapter by Åkerblom (this volume, Chap. 6), it was the researchers’ intention to include children’s parents as participants to develop the relationship between them and the preschool teachers. However, quite early in the project, it became clear that the parents were not as invested as the researchers and teachers had hoped. This often had to do with parents’ unpredictable living and working conditions, as several of them were asylum seekers. These unstable circumstances made it very difficult for the researchers to create conditions for parental involvement. Furthermore, many parents were more interested in issues of direct importance in their everyday life, such as the preschool’s opening hours, than in educational development.

In their chapter, Ødegaard et al. (this volume, Chap. 5) describe how their project took an unexpected turn in connection to the COVID-19 pandemic. Shortly after the first workshop, the pandemic broke out, and all preschools in Norway were swiftly closed; and when they were opened again, parents were no longer allowed inside. These events created a need to develop digital solutions to enable parents to be involved in the project, and the planned physical workshops with participants were replaced with digital meetings. Thereby, because of the participants’ digital engagement, digital learning became a positive and unpredictable side effect of the project.

To conclude, the unpredictability of collaboration projects can in fact offer researchers and teachers new perspectives on their respective practices and serve as an important and useful eye-opener. It can also generate a more complete understanding of participant perspectives, which supports validity (Walton et al., 2015). Therefore, a conclusion drawn in this volume is that, instead of fearing the unpredictable, researchers should embrace the messiness of projects. This also has important implications for how research applications within this field need to be evaluated and carried out – there needs to be an openness in relation to the pre-described working plan.

Looking Forward: Future Questions for Praxis-Related Research

To further emphasise the importance of this volume, we want to widen the perspective and reflect on the praxis-related research trend in educational science from a political angle. Blossing (2020) comments on the Swedish government’s efforts to support sustainable models for collaboration in research, educational practice, and teacher education, between academia and schools. He does not see that the models elaborated so far have resulted in equal conditions, as teachers’ and school leaders’ possibilities to participate in research are still restricted. He concludes that the main outcome of the efforts are merely that researchers have gotten yet another source of funding. It is obvious that possibilities for funding largely set the research agenda. In their chapter, Björklund and Palmér (this volume, Chap. 3) point out the different possibilities for funding that have been offered in Sweden recently. Lagerlöf (this volume, Chap. 8) also highlights this, writing about experiences from a research and development project funded by the EU, in this case also involving commercial companies dealing in educational technologies. When these funding agencies call for applications, they expect research characterised by usefulness, and this sets the research agenda. It also gives the agencies power to define what usefulness is. These definitions may be fundamentally different from what educational researchers would formulate.

Along with public funding agencies’ tendency to offer incitements for collaborative research projects in which teachers take part, there is also an identified need for what is called activist professionalism (Skattebol & Arthur, 2014; Groundwater-Smith & Sachs, 2002). Skattebol and Arthur (2014) sketch a line of argument, grounded in an Australian context, that ECE has received growing recognition and is regarded as increasingly important. This has caused a development whereby ECE has been incorporated into a logic characterised by market-based principles and demands for efficiency. Professionals in this domain have been forced into a position in which they are ‘resigned’ and ‘more likely to be attracted to pre-packaged curriculum’ rather than to take ‘the leadership to develop their own contextually responsive curriculum’ (p. 351). Hong and Rowell (2019), writing from an American perspective, take it one step further. They see a problem with ‘civic illiteracy’, that is, when citizens lack the capacity to take part in their own communities, which is a necessary precondition for a democratic society. A typical logic of reasoning for civic illiterates is that ‘only the anointed experts of the ruling elite know how to address specific social problems’ (p. 125). Hence, it could be argued that there exists a problem on two related levels – people in general do not take part in the democratic society, as they have the right to do, and teachers in particular do not take part in the development of what should be their own domain of professionalism. This is due to an expectation that there is some other party, higher up in the hierarchy, who will – and is able to – come up with solutions to societal problems. Hong and Rowell (2019) point to action research, which is one of the research methods discussed in this volume, as a possible answer and way forward for the current situation:

We argue that in education, a domain at the very heart of democratic possibility, action research and practitioner research are valuable tools for helping restore civic literacy. We suggest that these tools are essential in pushing back against the efforts to maintain a knowledge monopoly in education that revolves around the interest of corporations and forester uninformed citizens. (p. 126)

Hong and Rowell (2019) also elaborate on another problem that concerns the divide between researchers and teachers. Researchers may find teachers to be dismissive of scientific results. Hong and Rowell find several potential reasons for this. One is that when a teaching method is elaborated in one context, it may be inapplicable in another, and teachers may find the research results irrelevant. What is understood as scientific quality – that is, presenting results based on a randomised controlled design – can risk running counter to the will to produce practice-relevant results, according to teachers. Another thing that Hong and Rowell point out is that teachers may also find research hard to read, being too abstract, and sometimes do not even have time for this kind of further education. In sum, teachers become technical operators who should ‘[follow] what-works knowledge produced by academics whether or not it can be translated into their workplaces’ (p. 132).

Considering the experience and insights reported in the chapters of the present volume, we do not share this somewhat negative picture. In comparison, it seems as if the Scandinavian countries have come a bit further than some other parts of the world have in bridging the gap between teachers and researchers in collaboration. This is also seen in the many initiatives for research schools dedicated to teachers in the Scandinavian countries, where teachers in preschool and school share their time between preschool/school and partaking in a research education (PhD). There is a political aim to give teachers agency in knowledge formation in their own practice, but the question is whether this creates possibilities for a teacher to act as an entrepreneurial teacher professional or activist professional (Groundwater-Smith & Sachs, 2002). The former entails a chance to climb in the hierarchy, without changing it, while the latter means resolving the divide between those who have influence and those who do not. Even if we do not fully recognise the descriptions by Skattebol and Arthur (2014) and Hong and Rowell (2019), we agree that they highlight important aspects of assigning relevance to praxis-related research that is grounded in the fundaments of a democratic society.

When considering the points in the chapters of this volume, we have seen that different agendas for participating in projects often exist and that it takes time to negotiate aims. We have also highlighted the need to make it possible for these kinds of collaborations to live on for longer periods, often beyond what is covered by the funding agencies. Here, we see a challenge for the universities. Hermansson and Ahnborg (2020) mention this challenge in terms of a ‘balance of incitement’. One of the main tasks of universities, along with research and education, is to inform and collaborate with the surrounding society about knowledge, also referred to as the third mission. The university should be useful to society. This, Hermansson and Ahnborg (2020) argue, could be problematic from a researcher’s perspective, when the benefits of collaboration cannot be counted in funding. From the perspective of schools in Sweden, collaborating with universities can be more clearly demanding, as they are required by school law to build their work on a scientific ground. How do they realise this requirement? A straightforward way is to maintain collaboration with universities. For researchers, a prominent ambition, along with the possibility to get funding, is to be published. To produce publishable results, they often have to formulate questions of the type ‘what is going on here’. For a school principal, it is often more interesting to get answers to a question like ‘what works here’. Hence, researchers are driven by the requirements of getting funding and schools by the Education Act. Researchers need to be published, while schools need answers to everyday problems, so there may be many different incitements to balance between when establishing collaborations.

To sum up, with this volume we want to point out two challenges for academia. The first concerns what we just have touched upon, namely, the need to make visible the third mission of universities (i.e. collaboration with the surrounding society). Providing researchers with opportunities to engage in this task is necessary to maintain the kinds of collaborations with preschools and schools that are needed for building the important trust we have identified, both in previous research and in the chapters in this volume. The third mission needs to be given more status within universities. The second challenge concerns universities’ responsibilities for preschool teacher education. This must include the fostering of a profession that develops a view of themselves as potential knowledge producers. As Groundwater-Smith and Sachs (2002) claim, ‘[i]nitial teacher education has to be more than an instrumental preparation for enacting government policies in the schools as required by the audit society’ (p. 353). Hong and Rowell (2019) warn that teacher education tends to transmit a view to students that knowledge is something that is produced by academic researchers and so to speak belongs to the university rather than to teachers. Hong and Rowell maintain the importance of university courses that give students their own research experiences.

Finally, we want to highlight a challenge that we see as the next step in the development of this field of methodology: recognising children as actors in research. According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989), children have the right to an education and cultural participation and to express themselves freely. We argue that these rights are also highly relevant for collaborations between researchers and preschools. This is of particular importance in areas where children and parents do not master the majority language and risk being excluded from research. It is of utmost importance that all voices be heard – not only the loudest ones.