Conference Agenda

The purpose of this paper is two folded. One is to generate knowledge about characteristics of teaching in relation to play and how content within teaching emerge between participants. The second purpose is related to methodology and analysis whereby using interaction analysis (IA) give same attention to expressions from the body as from the spoken word to understand response in diverse ways in relation to participants different ways of communicating response. Diverse ways in this study involve both verbal and/or bodily expression. Due to the emergent need of research that explore teaching in relation to multi-lingualism in an Early Childhood Education (ECE) this study aims to contribute to that field (Norling & Lillqvist, 2016; Kultti, 2021). A central aspect in this study when analyzing teaching in relation to play is the aspect of interaction between participants.

This study aims to contribute with knowledge about how teaching in relation to play can be understood by asking:

1. What can be characterized as teaching in relation to play?

- What emerge as content in teaching in relation to play?

- How is response expressed between participants?

The study is theoretically framed by Play Responsive Teaching in Early Childhood Education and Care for a social and cultural sustainability (PRECEC_SCS) in relation to pedagogical tact (Lövlie, 2007; Van Manen, 2015) and, didaktik (Klafki, 1995). Klafkis (1995) critical constructive didaktik is related to an understanding of teaching that goes from bottom-up. Which in this study signify starting from what the children seem to be interested in.

Play-responsive teaching (PRECEC) has a theoretical perspective where the concept of response is used in relation to children's play. Teachers’ response to children's play can lead to teaching of a new content this is in relation to a joint attention or make common witch is related to intersubjectivity (Barnhart, 2004; Pramling et al, 2019). According to Lövlie (2007), pedagogical tact is about an immediate action that is related to the teacher's adherence. It is sensed by a movement, a gaze, a physical action, or verbal communication, and takes place in the moment (see van Manen, 2015). Pedagogical tact is linked to what happens between people in which intersubjectivity (see. Pramling et al, 2019) and response are highly relevant.

PRECEC_SCS also orient to how participants shift within an activity by focusing on As if and As is. The concept As if, relate to fiction and As is, relates to reality and is used to analyze how the alternation between As if and As is occurs within an activity. According to Pramling et al (2019), through the combination of As If and As Is, we can understand more of the world. Engaging in the alternation between As if and As is can educate us about the world on an individual as well as a collective level. Within PRECEC_SCS the concepts are associated with responsiveness and intersubjectivity and direct understanding towards what happens within an activity with a focus on the communication and the alternations between As if and As is.

Among the United Nations' global goals is to provide inclusive and equitable quality education at all levels for all people by 2030 so that they "acquire the knowledge and skills needed to exploit opportunities and to participate fully in society" (UN General Assembly 2015, p.7). Successful educational processes require developmental guidance for children's domain-specific development, especially during transitions, as, for example, the transition to elementary school is a sensitive stage in which children are particularly vulnerable (Fabian & Dunlop 2007) and research findings point to the great importance of preschool domain-specific competencies for further educational success (Duncan et al. 2007). In order to enable a sustainable educational process for each child, the individual learning development of the children should be focused on, especially in heterogeneous inclusive contexts (Petriwskyj, Thorpe & Tayler 2014). In this context, an individual, domain-specific learning development analysis represents the basis for continuous inclusive support (Watkins 2007). Following this assumption, the diagnostic instrument ILEA-T (Geiling, Liebers, & Prengel 2015) can be used to capture domain-specific competencies in the transition from kindergarten to school. Yet, this instrument cannot adequately represent the abilities and development of children at the lower levels of competence. However, individual support of the children's educational and developmental processes is of high importance, especially for children with significant domain-specific learning and developmental challenges (SLDC), in order to enable them to acquire literacy skills of high quality and thus their participation in the general curriculum and in their environment using sign and writing systems (Erickson, Hatch & Clendon 2010). For the group of children with SLDC whose competencies are at or below the first two competency levels in the domain of early literacy according to the ILEA-T-level model (Geiling et al., 2015), there is a lack of diagnostic instruments with which their competencies can be captured in such a way that suitable educational support can be derived from them (Liebers, Geiling, Prengel 2020). Furthermore, diagnostic approaches and support in the domain of early literacy are often considered of secondary importance by pedagogical professionals (Smidt 2012, Korntheuer 2014) and existing literary competencies of children are often over- or underestimated (Dollinger 2013). Therefore, the aim of the current research project ILEA-Basis-T is to detect the domain-specific preschool competencies of children in a resource- and support-oriented manner and to derive suitable support suggestions. The focus is on early mathematical abilities and emergent literacy skills as well as on bio-psycho-social well-being. Domain-specific diagnostic tools and support suggestions are being developed and tested in the project in cooperation with partners in practice. This paper focuses on the fit of the Emergent Literacy diagnostic tool for children with SLDC. Emergent literacy includes all reading and writing behaviors and understandings that precede and develop into conventional reading and writing (Sulzby, Branz & Buhle 1993). This paper will address the content of the emergent literacy model and how emergent literacy is operationalized and validated as a diagnostic tool. The question underlying this paper is: To what extent do the scales of the trial version of the diagnostic tool for early reading skills meet traditional quality criteria and how time-efficient, developmentally sensitive and fair are they with respect to the basal skills of children? Therefore, initial findings from piloting and testing will be discussed.

Internationally, children experience an increased focus on learning in early childhood education (ECE), reducing the time they play during ECE. At the same time, children’s free play areas are being reduced (Korkodilos, 2016), along with the opportunity for play due to organized leisure time after school (Broch et al., 2022), and because children are starting school earlier. Paradoxically, play is important for children’s learning and contributes to increased curiosity, wonder, and learning motivation. It is also important for children’s sense of belonging in society, social relationships, and physical and mental quality of life (e.g. Russ et al., 1999; Brussoni et al., 2015). In Norway, a new curriculum demands that pupils learn about increased life quality through interdisciplinary teaching but also suggests that play should be included in teaching to promote creative and meaningful learning (Ministry of Education and Research, 2017). Research shows that teachers often let pupils play, but they have little experience and knowledge of how play can both promote learning and secure the quality of life of their pupils (Bjerknes & Skalstad, 2022). By constructing a “Conceptual PlayWorld,” familiar from early childhood education in Australia (Fleer, 2019), one teacher educator and six student teachers set out to teach pupils in 2^nd grade. The certified teacher was an observer together with another teacher educator. We asked, how can applying CPW as a teaching approach in science contribute to holistic learning in elementary school?

Through interviews, we asked what all adult participants experienced and observed. We then used thematic analysis to categorize the themes.

Our results show that the Conceptual PlayWorld not only taught pupils within-subject concepts and understanding but also promoted pupils’ quality of life and interdisciplinary understanding during their learning process.

The aim and scope of the research project guiding this paper is to map 7-year-olds, first grade students, understandings of societal functions, such as the police, and to develop teaching with the ambition of increasing young students’ knowledge of these functions. The paper however focusses on the first part of the project, conducting interviews to create a cross section of Swedish first grade students’ understandings of societal functions. The paper is based on three key arguments. First, it is socially important to meet the equality issues that exist in the Swedish society and schools (i.e., that knowledge and civic values have different outcomes depending on student’s background and where they grow up) by studying student's different understandings of societal functions. Second, more education research in the area of ‘conceptual change’ is needed for developing the knowledge of concept understanding and concept-progress regarding societal issues among younger students. Third, as the new Swedish curricula, emphasizing student’s understandings of facts, has been launched there is a need for supporting schools and teachers work. In this paper we suggest that children’s understandings on basic societal functions is an important piece for developing social studies teaching.

The main research question is: how does first grade students understand societal functions such as the police?

The point of departure in the paper is that research on conceptual change, i.e., mapping students' different understandings of concepts/phenomena and investigating how these can be developed through teaching, is scant regarding societal issues (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Lundholm & Davis, 2013). In a review of the research Lundholm and Davis (2013) state that the societal oriented subjects are clearly underrepresented within this research orientation. The few studies made focus on broader issues like sustainable development and are mainly targeting older students (in secondary or upper secondary school) views. Compared to what is known about student’s understandings of, for example, mathematical concepts, both the empirical and theoretical research in social studies didactics needs to be developed.

The theoretical framework used in this paper is phenomenography. For several decades it’s been used for studying younger children's understandings of mathematical phenomena and concepts (Björklund et al. 2021, Kullberg et al. 2020). Phenomenography takes departure in the idea that there are different ways to understand a certain phenomenon and that these different ways might be hierarchically ordered from less powerful to more powerful ways of understanding (Marton 2015; Marton & Booth 1997; Svensson 1997). As a research approach phenomenography sets out to track these different understandings of a phenomenon and to organize them in a hierarchically ordered outcome space with different categories of description, depicting the different increasingly more powerful ways of understanding the phenomenon.