Stora barngrupper = stora problem? : En undersökning om förskollärares positiva och negativa uppfattningar om stora barngrupper

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to investigate whether large groups of preschool children means lower quality of child development and learning. From six preschool teachers perspective we also wanted to find out the large groups of children positive and negative sides. The reason behind our choice of purposes is both our own experiences of mostly negative opinions of large groups of children among preschool teachers, as well as the news reports about the negative consequences that large groups of preschoolers may cause. The study draws on a approach of the term constructionism in the understanding of the teachers’ perceptions of larger groups of preschoolers. We applied a qualitative method based on interviews with six preschool teachers working on two different preschools. The result of our study shows that the interviewed preschool teachers sees mostly advantages rather than disadvantages with large groups of preschoolers. The preschool teachers describe that to be able to work with large groups of preschoolers there has to be a good structure and organization guaranteeing that the pedagogues have the right competence and that the preschools environment is well designed. The conclusion we have been able to draw is that the preschool teachers in our study is not sharing the same negative view that previous research and media reports have shown. Instead the preschool teachers in our study sees more positive than negative aspects of large groups of preschoolers, as long as there is a good structure and organization.