Keywords

Introduction

The starting point for this chapter is a participatory preschool practice development project carried out between January 2017 and December 2019. The project was funded by the Swedish Institute for Educational ResearchFootnote 1 and took place in a linguistically heterogeneous neighbourhood of a major Swedish city. The overall aim of the project was to, in collaboration with the participants, explore conditions for early childhood education (ECEC) in a migrating world by identifying the challenges facing this particular preschool institution. The unit where the project was initiated had been established already in the 1990s as part of a process of supporting and promoting the integration of children who had arrived in Sweden with their families as refugees. Still today, the introductory unit accepts children aged 3–5 years who do not speak Swedish, who are expected to move on to regular preschool groups after a year. At the time of writing, the separation of children in order to provide extra support is not common in preschools in Sweden; however, this has been a major purpose of the unit since its start. Over the course of the project, the other two units (regular preschool groups) of the preschool came to also be included in the participatory actions.

Hypothetically, preschool education can provide children with opportunities for learning, language development, and participation. But at the same time, these opportunities are contrasted with a number of challenges when it comes to achieving the goals of the preschool curriculum (National Agency for Education, 2018), including ‘education should be of equivalent value regardless of where in Sweden it is provided’ (p. 6). Such challenges are connected to widening social differences and cultural and linguistic diversity, particularly in metropolitan cities. In some of the neighbourhoods in these cities, early childhood education faces serious problems when it comes to fulfilling the compensatory mission and principles of social, cultural, and linguistic diversity and equality. Moreover, at the same time, preschools in these neighbourhoods have the lowest rate of educated preschool teachers (Delblanc et al., 2021), a factor that also contributes to the lack of opportunities to provide a good education for children in such settings.

Global phenomena such as transience, migration processes, and linguistic diversity characterise contemporary societies, which has implications for societal institutions like ECE. Because of this, Swedish preschool can be said to be in a time of change; but what does that mean in regard to the conditions for preschools and preschool education for children today? Where do the opportunities lie, and what are the difficulties? These were our initial questions when we, a group of four researchers, met with educators, preschool managers, children, and their parents in a preschool unit situated in a culturally heterogeneous neighbourhood in one of Sweden’s major cities. Two of us had contacted the preschool manager after reading a preschool teacher student’s essay based on fieldwork in the unit and finding the challenges of this particular setting to be interesting to investigate further. The idea was to explore these challenges and opportunities and start a development process at the preschool, and not least to work in collaboration with educators, children, and their parents in this enterprise. The preschool manager at the time, who was also one of the initiators of the unit in question, was excited for the opportunity to initiate a project and invited us to conduct the participatory preschool practice development project there.

In this chapter, I will discuss the project with a focus on the process of participatory action research, and more specifically the possibilities for different actors to participate in these processes.

Participatory Action Research

As argued above, the opportunities to participate and co-construct knowledge were important for our project; this was why we chose a participatory approach. Moreover, one of the goals of participatory action research is to shift away from the binary of researcher/researched and co-construct knowledge in collaboration (Hawkins, 2015). Research from a participatory perspective is seen as a collaborative action carried out with and by participants, and an important aim is to empower and enable all participants in a project (Hawkins, 2015). The idea, following Kemmis et al. (2014), is that participants in a ‘community of practice’ encounter one another in intersubjective spacesFootnote 2 through dialogue, and this was why the research was carried out on-site, during the unit’s daily work. Nevertheless, participatory action research is not an easy undertaking for any participant, and it is often referred to as both messy and complex (Hawkins, 2015). Even though we were aware of this and anticipated some tensions, we did not fully understand what it would mean to work in collaboration, and above all, that participants may have completely different expectations about the outcomes of the research and very different preconditions for being active participants in the research process.

The research implementation followed a typical action research cycle, which includes planning, action, observation, and reflection (McNiff, 2002). The identified strengths and challenges, leading to action, were viewed from different perspectives, and group discussions were conducted, involving researchers and participants of different kinds (e.g. educators, leaders, parents, and children). The process was ongoing and iterative, and followed a timeline over the 3 years: The first phase (Year 1) involved exploring and identifying strengths and challenges as well as planning activities. In the second year, a number of actions were carried out, and in the third and final phase, the actions were evaluated and followed up, including plans for future development (Fig. 6.1).

Fig. 6.1
The research cycle. It has five steps. These are identification, planning, implementation, reflection, and modification.

Action research cycle

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The purpose of the reflexive dialogues was to reflect on the daily practice in the unit, but also on the words used to describe it. We were especially interested in exploring different meanings that the same expression may take on in connection with the different practices the participants were involved in. All the dialogues were subsequently recorded and transcribed, which made it possible to go back and analyse the material. The dialogues occurred once a month for 2 years, and during this time, based on action research characteristics (Kidd & Kral, 2005; Braye & McDonnell, 2013), the researchers and educators together explored the challenges and possible actions in a dialogic space in which all participants could feel free to express their points of view. The ambition was to facilitate knowledge and change through shared exploration and analysis, rather than the researchers simply telling the educators what to do. Nevertheless, the dialogues were also characterised by some tension and frustration, from both parties. One such field of tension was the relatively open aim of the research and the different expectations regarding what the study would lead to for those involved. This meant that the process of reaching a common understanding of the strengths and challenges of the pedagogical practice and plan activities was time-consuming, and after some time the staff expressed frustration and asked why ‘nothing’s happening’ and why we were just ‘talking and talking’. Another challenge concerned the possibilities to take an active part in the project. Originally, the idea was to work in collaboration with staff, children, managers, and parents, first in homogenous groups and later creating transversal groups for a diversity of perspectives. This idea was exerted to some extent in one of the actions, involving the development of the preschool’s outdoor environment, but for several reasons it was not possible to apply the approach in most of the project’s actions. I will discuss these reasons later in the chapter.

Initiating a Transformation of Practices

As the transformation of preschool practice was one of the purposes of the project, the concept of ‘practice’ was used in order to find a way to explore and discuss with the educators what was going on at the site. In line with ideas of Mahon et al. (2017) concerning the notion that transformation of educational practices must occur at the local sites (as opposed to being ordered from above), we stressed the importance of carrying out the transformation of practice in close collaboration with the participants and on-site. According to Schatzki (2005), an easy way to delimit a practice is to simply ask people who are involved in something what they are doing. Their answer to this question is the specific practice they are involved in. In our case, the answers could sound like ‘we’re involved in circle time’, ‘we’re playing in the sand pit’, ‘we’re having lunch’, or ‘we’re planning next week’s activities’, and so on, depending on who was asked. An interesting implication here is that different participants may perceive the same activity as different practices; so when a practice is delimited, there can be different perspectives on it. A number of practices were developed, such as leading practice (Harju, 2022), outdoor practice (Nordén, 2021), and several pedagogical practices (Andersson, 2021; Åkerblom & Salimi-Amlashi, 2021) of the preschool unit. Practices can be seen as being framed by the ‘sayings’ (what it is possible to say within the practice), ‘doings’ (what activities are possible), and ‘relatings’ (how those who are part of the practice relate to each other) going on at a site (Mahon et al., 2017). It could be argued that a distinction between ‘sayings’ and ‘doings’ is difficult to make, as sayings can also be perceived as activity. However, in this case the distinction is made for analytical reasons, whereby ‘sayings’ are connected to the use of language – the specific verbal expressions that are used and what they mean to the participants – while ‘doings’ refer to other activities and actions. The transformation of practices consequently involves a change in sayings (the verbal expressions used), doings, and relatings, so the analytical focus was accordingly aimed at identifying aspects of the practices in these terms and raising awareness among the participants about how their practices were framed.

A number of actions were subsequently planned, carried out, and evaluated over the project’s 3 years. However, one challenge that stood out and was much discussed among the adult participants involved the pedagogical efforts needed to reinforce the children’s language development. Thus, the focus in this chapter will be on the process of participatory action research connected to the practice of supporting language development in the introductory unit, and the possibilities for different actors to participate in processes of sharing knowledge, transforming conditions to shape practice (Fig. 6.2).

Fig. 6.2
Language practice development has three steps. These are identification, planning, and translanguaging.

Process of language practice development

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Transformation of the Language-Development Practice

One of the objectives expressed by the preschool management was that they wanted the research to involve an examination of the pedagogical practice of supporting language learning in Swedish as well as work with trauma awareness in the tradition of the introductory unit where the project was initiated. In the quotation below, one of the managers reasons about the unit and her expectations regarding the research:

(In the) beginning of this unit, many years ago, they wanted a preschool unit where the children would feel safe and be immersed in the Swedish language by the staff/…/ who also dared to deal with the traumas they had brought with them/…/and this has followed the unit the whole time/…/And I have a wish that this research will show the result that this is a good concept…is it like this we should go on working? Is it good to mix children who don’t know any Swedish at all in one unit? What do they do to teach them Swedish? Or should the children go directly into other units to mix with the Swedish children?

Moreover, in the preschool administration of the preschool where the introductory unit was situated, there was an unclear picture of the unit’s specific aims, and when the project began, the management felt that they needed to review both the internal and external structures and transform the pedagogical practices, as the challenges had changed since the unit was initiated. These concerns, of course, had consequences for the design of the project: in one way favourable to the development approach since the preschool management agreed that something had to be done, but at the same time challenging, as different actors had different ideas about what the transformation would include and what would happen to the unit.

The participating educators had been employed at the unit between 6 and 15 years and had all originally applied for positions there because of its focus on the integration of newly arrived children and families. Three of the educators themselves had experience of migration, arriving in Sweden as refugees during different periods. The educators agreed to work in a participatory way to explore the strengths and challenges of their daily pedagogical work (even though, in retrospect, they were likely not fully aware of what the participatory approach would mean to them). They could themselves see a number of challenges in connection to the perceived lack of clarity regarding the unit’s purpose but at the same time were afraid to express their concerns as this could mean that the unit, if it did not serve its purpose, would be closed down. One of the challenges expressed by the educators was that, although they believed they were providing a good educational environment for the children, they also perceived the unit as being isolated in relation to the surrounding organisational, juridical, and economic structures, which they found to be inflexible compared to their needs.

Involving the Educators in Transforming the Practice of Language Development

The aim of the reflexive dialogues carried out between the staff members and two of the researchers was to reflect on the daily practice within the unit and on the words used to describe it. Kemmis and McTaggart (2005) claim that communicative spaces are opened by reflecting together on practices’ conduct, character, and consequences as well as, with a focus on language use and expressions, reflecting on differences and ambiguities of the meanings of expressions used to describe the practices.

When the practice of language development support in the preschool unit was reflected on, it became clear that the fact that none of the children knew Swedish was, from the outside, considered a significant challenge for the educators and the children. The example below comes from one of the early discussions with some representatives of the administration of the preschool area where the unit was situated. Here, the participants were asked to express the aim of the work done there:

/It’s difficult/…because language is always an obstacle. If the children can’t make themselves understood through language, it isn’t always easy before they find other ways.

Another challenge (identified from the analysis of the ‘sayings’ connected to this practice) was the discourse around the migrant children as ‘lacking the language’ and being seen from a deficit perspective (i.e. with a focus on what they lack instead of their assets) regarding their language development. The following quotation from one of the participants in the discussion with the preschool administration captures the view of the children in the introductory unit:

Those children have a … many of them have really great needs. /…/ We have a special needs teacher attached to the unit, which is necessary considering the children who are there … and that’s unique, one might say – that there are specially trained staff who work a lot and intensively on language, who are used to dealing with children who don’t know Swedish at all.

The implicit view of the children as lacking security and language was closely connected to the unit’s original purpose and why it had been organised as it had. Although the ideas behind the unit might have been relevant at the time it was founded, it was challenging for us as researchers (and, as we would later see, for the educators as well) to accept the premises, especially in regard to the role of the majority language. We were afraid that this position would make it difficult to meet with the others, since the idea behind the participatory design was to find intersubjectivity and respect the knowledge of other participants. However, during the dialogues the educators also expressed that they saw their practice as positioned between the different ideas of the unit’s aim. On the one hand, they were primarily expected to promote and support the Swedish language along unspoken monolingual norms; on the other, an idea expressed in the policy documents was that they were to support linguistic diversity as an asset for both themselves and the children. This notion is connected to a language norm based on multilingualism. The challenges of being in this position of perceived conflicting demands and ideals were often discussed in the dialogues concerning, among other things, the educators’ own backgrounds as bilingual and having at some point been new to the majority language. They also identified that, although multilingualism was considered an asset on the policy level, it was very unclear how they were expected to support the children’s various mother tongues besides teaching them Swedish. And although the educators strove to use a multilingual approach in their activities, their language practices were still based mainly on the assumed superior role of the majority language (Swedish), with the children’s mother tongues seen merely as providing support for learning it (Harju & Åkerblom, 2020).

At the beginning of the research project, the structuring of daily activities and the talk about the children in the unit were generally more in line with the monolingual norm. This was highlighted by the idea that children with access to more than one language must master one of them before starting to learn another, and the practices were organised accordingly. This norm was present along with another idea evident in the unit, that because the children did not understand Swedish they should be provided with clearly structured days. In the unit, the practice of caring was strongly connected to making the children feel safe. In the practice of language development, the sayings about the children conveyed that they ‘lacked the language’, which affected the doings, so that the aim would be to compensate the children for a perceived lack. This compensatory pedagogy was based on strong structure and Swedish word training in small groups. The relationship between children and educators was characterised by teacher-governed activities. When these norms were identified in the sayings about the language practice, we (the researchers) considered it a great challenge. On the one hand, we did not want to accept the monolingual norms or the views on the children, but at the same time felt that we had to be cautious and not diminish the educators’ competence or work. Consequently, we were hesitant regarding how to express our thoughts, which we felt would be seen as our questioning the basis for the pedagogical idea of the unit.

However, as the structure of the practice was discussed during the reflexive dialogues it became clear that the educators themselves felt that their work was too strongly framed by compensatory pedagogy, and they reflected on the fact that the children’s space for action was consequently limited in the language-development practice.

A turning point, and an opportunity for an encounter between the educators and a researcher around the children’s competencies, occurred when one of the researchers took the initiative to take part in the daily work on some days. The original intention was to let the children get to know her and feel comfortable, so as not to visit the place as a stranger. This researcher has a background as a preschool teacher herself, and since the children had experience of adults other than their educators (such as temporary staff and trainees) in the unit, it was assumed that they would treat her as one of the staff. However, in relation to the daily activities and the educators she had no clear position or role, as she came not only as a preschool teacher but also as an adult from outside as well as a researcher. This lack of clarity started a reflection process within the researcher group concerning our roles and also led to an expectation from the staff that this researcher and the other researchers would participate more concretely in working with educational development within the unit. The fact that one of the researchers had been participating in the daily work led to direct questions from one of the staff, concerning what the researcher had observed and what could be developed. This question became an important turning point, signifying an invitation to start a dialogue about the unit’s practices. The answer regarding what the researcher had seen and experienced in the unit led to the possibility to question the unit’s compensatory approach and to a dialogue with the educators about how to transform it.

Children’s Perspective

To involve the children in the participatory processes, one of the researchers, along with a person working as temporary staff, gave a group of children disposable cameras and asked them to take pictures of the unit. After the pictures had been developed, the researcher took them back to the unit and asked the children individually and in small groups to tell something about the pictures. These conversations were recorded and then transcribed. Some of the pictures then became part of an exhibition at the university library, which was an initiative by the library to show some of the research projects taking place at the university concerning space and place as well as methodologies of space and place. The library invited the children and the unit’s staff to visit the exhibition, which was then designed to be interesting to them (with children’s books in the various languages spoken by children in the unit and materials for drawing, as well as furniture and spaces of a size and design to be interesting to children). The children’s drawings then also became part of the exhibition. The visit was documented by the educators, and these pictures were placed on a wall at the preschool itself. The activity around how the children saw their environment thus also became visible to their parents. The process around the children taking pictures raised a great deal of interest from outside actors. The pictures and what the children explained about them served as a point of departure for discussions in various contexts, both related to the project and more generally, not least in reflective dialogues with the staff, who were impressed at how much the children knew and were able to express through and about the photographs. This became another turning point, with the educators starting to speak about the children in new ways, which meant that the relationships between staff and children also changed. The transformation of the language-development practice was triggered by new conceptions about children, their language assets, and learning in a linguistically rich environment. In turn, the new view on children could be interpreted as having been triggered by the new spaces for action that opened up as the children were invited to use the cameras and be part of an exhibition. Moreover, the notion of ‘translanguaging’ (Garcia & Wei, 2014) was introduced into the reflective dialogues by one of the researchers in order to help the educators verbalise their implicit notions about the children’s linguistic capabilities. The new sayings were interconnected with new doings and relatings as the purpose of the practice became to create translanguaging space, with the aim of supporting multilingualism, and the use of languages perceived as a process for expression and meaning making rather than as a tool for mastering the majority language (Harju & Åkerblom, 2020).

Involving the Management

During the project, it became increasingly obvious how important the involvement of management is for the successful development of preschool practice (Harju, 2022). At the beginning of the project, the preschool administration in the area had been undergoing a large reorganisation. Following this, the preschool’s management was new, had not worked together before, and, in relation to the project, was not those who had initially signed the project agreement. Consequently, they were not familiar with the project’s aims and circumstances. This raised questions from the educators about what time and assets they could use for taking part in the project, and about their space for action (Harju, 2022). To involve the management, reflective dialogues were eventually initiated with the preschool manager, assistant manager, first preschool teacher (whose role was to serve as pedagogic leader for a number of preschools in the area), and one of the researchers. The following quotation illustrates the dilemma of feeling like an outsider:

Since we weren’t here from the start of it, it’s been a bit strange to become part of a project… great research here…fun, yes, but then…well, it was kind of confusing in the beginning as to what it means, really…

In addition, the vagueness of the project’s aim (characteristic of participatory projects) was frustrating to the management, and in the dialogues one of them gave voice to this: ‘I thought it was really vague from the beginning, I must say… what will this lead to and what is it, really?’

The aim of the dialogues was firstly to inform the management of the project, of developments, and to ask for active support to the staff involved in the project. Another aim was to actively involve the management in the project and the co-creation of knowledge and create a dialogic space between staff, management, and researchers.

By the end of the project, the members of the management group spoke differently about it in the reflexive dialogues and commented on the staff having been given more space for action and on the roles of the researchers:

…yes, that they (the staff) were allowed to go, that they were given their space too, that like, you come here and you’re the researchers, it sounds like, my God! /Scary/ – this approach that you had was cautious, and I think one has to, in some way, have confidence in you. Moreover, that it’s possible to talk to you! You’re actually ordinary people.

A turning point arose when the management group started to recognise a change in the way the staff from the unit spoke about their work, using new vocabulary (Harju, 2022). At this point, the managers started to realise that the children and the staff (and themselves) could benefit from what was being done in the project. Here, this is expressed by two participants from the management group:

I can see that my co-workers have become so much surer of themselves from the pieces they got… support for playing, language games, and all that was done in these groups /…/

Yes, me too, and I think it’s really important that their work has been questioned a bit…or, not questioned, but they needed to put words to it.

It is interesting to note that, at the beginning of these dialogues, when the managers referred to the project they used the pronoun ‘your’ – as in ‘your project’ (i.e. the researchers’) – but by the end they talked about it as ‘our’ project, including themselves, the staff, and the children at the whole preschool as well as the researchers, which indicates that they saw themselves as co-creators of the project. However, it became obvious that, even though the managers felt they were part of the project, without the support of the external preschool administration it was difficult to pursue the development (Harju, 2022). The fact that most parts of the project were carried out on-site, during the unit’s daily work and with no external funding for the participating staff, made the work costly for the management, who were to provide substitutes when there were meetings with the researchers and when members of the participating staff were invited to conferences and presentations involving the project. This had a negative impact on the preschool budget, which led to the manager being criticised when it did not add up (Harju, 2022). This shows that, for this kind of project to be successful and the development to be sustainable, it is not enough to deal with it at the workplace level alone.

Involving the Parents

The design presented to the school institute funding the project involved parents, with an intent to enable another type of development than that seen in projects centred entirely around staff at a workplace (Avery, 2021). This design was also consistent with a desire expressed by the educators to develop their collaboration with parents. The parents of the children enrolled in the unit at the beginning of the project were contacted and interviewed in their mother tongues by one of the researchers. This researcher is proficient in many of these mother tongues, such as Arabic, Dari, Parsi, and a number of other languages. When she did not know a language, interpreters were hired, and the interviews were carried out with their help. However, it was soon apparent that the conditions for involving parents were not favourable for any deeper commitment (Avery, 2021). The staff’s expectations and ambitions primarily concerned daily communication with parents around their individual situations, rather than a shared reflection on structures, aims, or work forms. The parents lived in different parts of the city, spoke different languages, and had their children in the unit for short, limited, and sometimes unpredictable periods (as some were asylum seekers). They were busy working, looking for work, doing traineeships, taking language courses, dealing with Swedish administrative demands, trying to obtain necessary information, taking public transport between different parts of the town for various tasks, caring for younger siblings or older relatives, undergoing health treatment or attempting to access healthcare, and so on (Avery, 2021). Additionally, the parents who were contacted in the course of the project did not have expectations to engage in educational or organisational development. Opinions expressed by parents concerned things like having access to the unit over summer break, which was perceived as very long, and not being sent to another unit after a year. The issues they raised concerned the overall organisation and legislation of preschool and were therefore not anything the educators would be able to influence.

Discussion

The objective in this chapter has been to discuss and problematise collective processes that emerged in a 3-year participatory project in one neighbourhood of a major Swedish city between 2017 and 2019. Since the project was designed as participatory action research, a major aim was to empower and open up new spaces for action for all participants. Opening space for action was recognised as occurring after changes had been made to the practice; such changes would often be connected to some kind of turning point. In the chapter, I have addressed some of the spaces for action that were opened up for the educators, children, and managers at the preschool where the project was carried out, as well as the turning points that led to the changes.

One turning point that led to a discussion and negotiation about pedagogical development within the unit was when one of the researchers spent time in the unit and observed the daily work with the eyes of a preschool teacher. This led to an invitation by the educators for this researcher to work in the unit on a weekly basis, as well as to be part of the staff planning meetings. The process thus opened up new space for the staff to take more ownership of the project, take initiatives, and set agendas. However, it was sometimes obvious that researchers and staff participated under different conditions, and that when the ‘reality’ of the unit made itself known, the staff had to prioritise other things besides participating in dialogues with the researcher. The project being carried out on-site, during the unit’s daily work and with no external funding for participating staff, made the work costly for the management, who had to provide substitutes when there were meetings with the researchers and when persons from the participating staff were invited to conferences and presentations involving the project. The negative impact on the preschool budget, and the following criticism of the manager, shows how difficult it is to pursue preschool development without the support of the external preschool administration.

Another challenge addressed in this chapter was that, even though an important aim had initially been to involve the children’s parents, after interviews with them it became clear that they had very different priorities than participating in the preschool unit’s daily work. It was not that they were uninterested in participating in the preschool development; their lives simply often did not enable them to work with the preschool. What the parents expressed instead had to do with the insecurity of their position, above all as asylum seekers, and having relatives affected by war or displacement, which made the staff feel frustrated as they were not able to help them with this situation.

What space for action did open up for the children? Due to changes in the practices they were a part of, their space of action increased and in the course of the project they came to be more actively involved in the preschool activities. As their educators (and the researchers) realised that they were more competent language users than previously thought, the children’s photographs and reflections on the spaces they had depicted challenged the idea of them as ‘lacking language’. This was what eventually led to changes in the pedagogical practices formed around the children. The new sayings concerning children as competent users of multiple languages were interconnected with new doings and relatings as the purpose of the practice became to create a ‘translanguaging’ space where the children would be afforded more opportunities to express themselves in various modes and take an active part in the activities and development of their preschool environment.

However, there remain challenges that could never be dealt with on the level of a preschool development project but that have a profound impact on children’s lives and conditions. This was actualised one morning, when I came to the setting and found the educators sad and upset that one of the children had not come to the unit that morning. The reason for this was that, along with his mother and siblings, he had been deported the night before. What happened to this child shows a major structural discrepancy between a discourse stressing the needs of the child and the protection of children’s rights and equality on the one hand, and a policy that does not provide a stable and secure environment for families with young children on the other, where considerations for the child’s wellbeing no longer apply when a family receives a negative decision in the asylum-seeking process.