Naturvetenskap i förskolan : En intervjustudie om förskollärares tankar och arbetssätt

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study was to investigate how preschool teachers think about preschool science, what they consider science to be and how they deal with specific curricular objectives related to science. Science is a part of our everyday life, it is a prerequisite for understanding everyday phenomena and how the world is working. Nevertheless it is often dropped in favour of other subjects in Swedish preschools. The eight preschool teachers participating in this study are all working in the same municipality in the western part of Sweden with children aged 1- 5 years. The method used in this study was interviews. The interviews were recorded to facilitate the transcriptions. The results show that preschool teachers find that science is an important subject that should be introduced to the children early on in life. They also show that preschool teachers consider science to have a preventive effect on the learning to the children, and it is needed for them to understand everyday processes and phenomena. When working with the curricular objectives linked to science, the result show that preschool teachers perceive nature as an asset to develop the children’s knowledge and interest for scientific concepts. Factors that impact the work with science in preschool could, according to the educators, be lack of knowledge, the children’s age or their attitude towards the subject. Conclusions that can be drawn from this study are that preschool teachers draw on the children’s interests when teaching science. They also find it important to use the correct terms at an early stage.