Att se det omätbara : En vetenskaplig essä om omsorg och hur den visar sig i förskolan och i förskolepedagogers praktiska yrkeskunnande

Sammanfattning: This scientific essay deals with the concept of care and how care takes shape in preschool and in preschool teachers' practical professional knowledge. Through a phenomenological perspective and in relation to Hanna Arendt's discourse on collective responsibility, the study approaches the concept of care in preschool but also the significance of the phenomenon itself. The study consists of four stories, all of which are taken from my own activities and an ethnological field study conducted at two different preschools, where participatory observation and interviewing have been used as a method. The focus of the observations has been to study the practical knowledge of preschool educators and to see how care takes place. By studying, reflecting, and critically examining preschool educators and my own practical professional knowledge, I aim to get closer to the many forms of care. Which is important to be able to make it visible and reflect on the many meanings of care. The study also examines the relationship of care to learning and how these can form a whole in preschool. New public management is described in the study as something that has characterized the Swedish welfare sector since the late 1990s. Results, goal fulfillment, efficiency indications are some of the factors that characterize a successful business in an NPM-influenced business. When this is contrasted with the preschool's activities where the ability to empathize and the importance of showing consideration for others is what instead characterizes a safe and successful activity, it affects the preschool. The results of the study are discussed in relation to the philosophies of Nel Noddings. Where the approach becomes central to how care emerges in this study. The result of the study shows that care is something that is constantly and daily going on in preschool, but that the time, knowledge, or power to put it into words sometimes doesn`t exist. Which sometimes leads to that the important practical knowledge about care, doesn`t take equivalent place in preschool. Which unfortunately has major consequences for daily practice where care risks becoming a concept that does not keep up with developments in preschool. Giving care to children in preschool appears in the study as a relational phenomenon. Care as a phenomenon is created when we educators listen to what the children express and try to reach them where they are. When the care action is answered by the child, the relationship between educator and child is strengthened. This process requires an awareness, mind presence and knowledge from the educator’s perspective.