Den fria lekens kraft och möjligheter : En studie kring förskollärarnas syn på barns lek och lärande i förskolan

Sammanfattning: The study is about playing and learning in preschool. We have chosen to focus on preschool teachers way of thinking about the role of free play for children's learning. We also want to get ideas on how the preschool teachers thoughts can be configured in their activities. We have chosen to base the study on the following issues: What thoughts do preschool teachers have regarding the importance of free indoor play for children's learning? In what ways does preschool teachers describe the free indoor play being portrayed in the occupation and what effect do these have on children’s learning? Our interest is that we want to find out about the preschool teachers experiences and how they think about the role of the play for children's learning in preschool and how this can be perceived and described by the preschool teachers. Because of this, we believe that the qualitative research interview is the most suitable method for this study. We chose to visit two Reggio Emilia preschools in Stockholm city where we interviewed a total of six preschool teachers who work with children of different ages. The preschool teachers have different experiences depending on their age and the number of years they have worked in the preschool. We have chosen to start from three different theoretical starting points for this study. We focused on Vygotsky's view of the socio-cultural perspective on the role of play in children's learning. We also chose to focus on Fröbel’s view of children's play. Furthermore, we write about Malaguzzi who is the founder of the Reggio Emilia Institute, which places great emphasis on the importance of the environment for the play and children's learning. The results of the study showed that all preschool teachers agreed that the free play is important and valuable for the children. Because children spontaneously play with others, they have the opportunity to discover new experiences that help them to understand their surroundings. In the result, it emerged that the indoor environment has an important role for the children's play and learning. In conclusion, the study's results showed that the play is the foundation of children's lifelong learning.