Emelie Stavholm

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Teacher professional learning in repsonse to contemporary challenges in early childhood education and care

The purpose of this doctoral thesis is to generate new knowledge, through the empirical study, of how an Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) work team collectively learn about two contemporary challenges in ECEC, by means of a theoretical framework. More specifically, how they learn about the relationship between teaching and play, particularly in relation to children’s digital experiences in play. The thesis is based on a combined research and development project where a work team in preschool were introduced to the theoretical framework Play-responsive early childhood education and care (PRECEC) which has implications for how to understand teaching and play activities in preschool. A sociocultural perspective functions as the theoretical framework of the thesis and the data consists of ten audio and Zoom-recorded focus group conversations which have been analyzed through Sociocultural Discourse Analysis. The thesis contains three empirical studies where the findings show how reading research articles and watching video-recordings play a central part when the participants appropriate theoretical concepts. The findings also show how time and dialogue based on scientific knowledge matters for the learning process when the work team change their reasoning about the teacher’s role in play. In addition, the findings illustrate how PRECEC, for the participants, mediate an understanding of play and teaching as responsive activities requiring mutual (digital) experiences. This mediating process is discussed as potentially enabling teacher agency. Overall, the findings contribute with new knowledge regarding how an ECEC work team learn about contemporary challenges by means of PRECEC and are therefore discussed in relation to implications for what becomes important when organizing for professional development in ECEC settings.