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Organizing for quality Evaluation of the preschool quality - a municipality perspective
Ph.D. student and lecturer Karin Lager, University of [email protected]
Moscow, 27-29 May, 2014
PROGRAM OF SWEDISH-RUSSIAN SEMINAR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
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The childDevelopment and outcomes
The teacher – child interaction
Group size Curriculum implementation
Curriculum implementation–municipality perspective
The quality of the preschool
environment
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Preschool arenas in Sweden• Society: • The Ministry of Education and Science• The National Agency for Education • The National Agency for School-inspection • Policy, curriculum and guidelines, quality
• Policy to evaluate the quality of the learning environment/preschool
• Municipality: • Municipalities are responsible on a local level. They
organize, lead and evaluate without any national given methods. For good and for bad. Conflicting perspectives and non science based models.
• Preschool: • Preschool teachers responsibility create conditions
for children’s learning
Din textSPreschool
Society
Municipality
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Municipality diversity - Lack of national equivalence
• Educational reforms – decentralisation • Restructuring • New governance • Quality and control
• National in service training to educate key-persons in municipalities to lead the systematic quality development work.
• This national in service training was followed and evaluated by Sonja Sheridan and Karin Lager
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The evaluation study
• 28 key persons with different professions were followed under one years in service training (two persons from each municipality)
• Interviews • Observations• Text document produced by the key persons
• Those key-persons were supposed to lead and organize the systematic quality development work in their municipality after the in service training year.
• Key-persons: preschool heads, preschool-teachers, development leaders, quality coordinators, teachers for special needs education
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Theoretical perspective - translating policy through different contexts
• Organising for quality • Translating – through contexts • Translators – key persons
• Legitimacy• Homogenisation • Institutionalisation
Din textSPreschool
Municipality
Society
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Aim
To explore organising of systematic quality work in municipalities.
To gain knowledge of the participating key-persons, how they
organize for quality, how they legitimate and how they work to
stabilize their municipalities work with quality.
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Research questions
• Who are these key-persons and what possibilities do they
have to act like key-persons?
• What's important for them to talk about in relation to quality
work?
• Which tensions can be seen in the key persons expressions?
• Which strategies do they use to stabilize quality work?
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Key-persons as translators
• When key-persons with different profession in the same
municipality work together they create better possibilities to
translate the work with quality and finds more arenas for
translating.
• Their cooperation is more valuable than their type of
profession.
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Barriers to stabilise quality work
• Achievement of objectives
• Different professions in pre-school
• Lack of influence and participation
• Lack of time and place for discussions
• Lack of distribution of responsibility
• Rational models
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Challenging tensions
• School vs. Pre-school
• Measurable quality vs. Experienced quality
• Profession vs. Politics
• Rational chain for control vs. Dialogue, interplay and
encounters for development
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Strategies to stabilize work with quality
• Creating tools
• Further education
• Crossing borders
• Pedagogical discussions
• Visualising their work in writing
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Conclusions
• The key-persons competence, legitimacy and contextual knowledge
of pre-school was significant in organising for quality
• Boundary objects united people in informal contexts that helped to
stabilize the work with quality
• The direction of legitimacy was towards other contexts, they searched
for new contexts with other agents
• When they homogenise it was by creating new arenas for translating
• The key-persons work wasn't foremost depended on profession but
on conditions.
