Ordet som försvann : En vetenskaplig essä om förskolepedagogers fostransansvar och praktiska yrkeskunnande

Sammanfattning: The word that disappeared - A scientific essay on the child-rearing responsibilities and practical professional knowledge of preschool educators This scientific essay examines how child-rearing tasks of the preschool educator relates to their practical knowledge from a hermeneutical perspective considered in the light of Hannah Arendt's concept of responsibility. The study consists of six subject narratives and an ethno-logical field study carried out at two preschools. Participatory observations and interviews were used as a method. Explored here is how professional responsibility, regulated in the preschool's governing documents, balances out against interpersonal responsibility in an activity where children spend most of their wakening hours and where attention is given to various factors such as the need for freedom, organisation and security. Examined too is how rules, companion education, self-regulation, leadership, adult authority and the application of governing documents weigh up against the concepts of children's' participation, influence and power. The concept of rearing in preschool is a controversial one: This may be due perhaps to connotations of rigid rules and nagging adults, but also that activities of the last decade have developed towards more school-based learning. Preschool teaching contains so much more however. In the daily workings of the enterprise security is established, while children are also learning to deal with materials and environments, learning to take on their own responsibility—exercising independence on a gradual basis. Alongside free play and creative activities, rearing therefore forms a vital element of children's non-cognitive learning that even affects interaction and communication. A concept that has been a part of the preschool world for over a century rearing has now been removed from the preschool curriculum.  Results demonstrate that the task of child-rearing is an element presupposed in a teachers’ practical knowledge. Based on a complex number of variables, children’s best interests are constantly considered. An unspoken gap sometimes arises between the professional’s responsibility and the interpersonal responsibility that they require to bridge the gap. This becomes particularly evident when children require the response of adults with whom they feel secure. In this manner child-rearing activities, previously seen as solely the parents concern, now also fall upon the educator, even if this remains unsaid. It is therefore assumed that the work of child-rearing will remain in preschools even if the word itself disappears. Responsibility, content and praxis, in the question of child-rearing therefore needs to be discussed and highlighted together with parenting to maintain a socially sustainable future.