What may characterise teaching in preschool? : The written descriptions of Swedish preschool teachers and managers in 2016

This paper addresses national concern about teaching in preschool, building on the challenges, opportunities, and requirements facing today’s preschools due to the higher expected level of preschool assignments. The aim is to build knowledge of how preschool teachers and managers from ten Swedish municipalities characterise preschool teaching. The material was generated in a 2016 survey completed by 243 respondents (91% response rate). A didactics-oriented textual analysis referred to Kansanen’s (1993) three-level schema comprising the action, theoretical, and meta-theoretical levels and the results identify eight distinctive traces ranging from the rejection to the recognition of preschool teaching. Recognition traces emphasise wide-ranging, diffuse, and child-centred teaching. The results indicate that traces of the action level are more prominent and ‘multivocal’ than are traces of the theoretical and meta-theoretical levels. Overall, the combined analytical results support the concept of ‘diffuse multivocal teaching’