Forskning om breddat deltagande i högre utbildning tenderar att ta ett studentperspektiv snarare än ett lärarperspektiv. I den här artikeln presenteras en intervjustudie med lärare i fokus och hur de uppfattar konsekvenserna av det politiska målet om breddad rekrytering till högre utbildning i sitt undervisningsuppdrag. I studien görs en tematisering (Braun & Clarke, 2006) av informanternas beskrivningar av de konsekvenser som det breddade deltagandet, vilket följer på breddad rekrytering, får i undervisningspraktiken. Tre avskilda teman framträder i informanternas uppfattningar: professionell utveckling, socialisation av studenter och anpassningar av arbets- och examinationsformer. Dessa tre teman ramas in av förändrade ramvillkor. De förändrade ramvillkoren resulterar huvudsakligen i att lärare i stor utsträckning saknar tid för de förändringar som de behöver göra i sitt undervisningsuppdrag. Resultaten visar också på en uppfinningsrikedom i undervisningsplanering samt förändringar i lärares omsorgsarbete riktat mot studenterna. Informanterna uttrycker värdet av mångfald inom högre utbildning, samtidigt som de uppfattaratt den ökade mångfalden tillsammans med ett ökat omsorgsarbete skapar en komplex och krävandearbetssituation för lärare.

Det projekt som beskrivs i den här rapporten har sin bakgrund i en inkommen frågeställning till AIMday2019. Den inkomna frågan gick vidare till forskarna Kerstin Bäckman och Lena O Magnusson vid Högskolan i Gävle. De är båda del av forskningsgruppen Early Childhood Education (ECE), vid Akademin för utbildning och ekonomi, och arbetar bland annat inom förskollärarprogrammet. AIMday utgjorde under 2019 en mötesplats där forskare från högskolan, skolledare, förskollärare, fritidspedagoger och lärare i regionen kunde mötas kring uppslag för praktiknära forskning. Målet var att frågor som emanerar ur den praktiska verksamheten ska möta forskare på högskolan för att i ett nästa steg kunna utgöra underlag för praktiknära forskning. Inkomna forskningsprojekt till AIMday har haft en begränsad budget och har därför lett till mindre pilotstudier vilka i framtiden skulle kunna utvidgas.

En stor del av dagens kommunala förskolelokaler är byggda för traditionella förskoleavdelningar om 18-24 barn. Det saknas dock relevanta forskningsresultat till stöd för kommunernas nybyggnation, vad gäller erfarenheter och framgångsfaktorer i att bygga förskolelokaler som stödjer samverkan mellan mindre barngrupper i enlighet med Skolverkets rekommendationer.

Därför har FoU-fonden för kommunernas fastighetsfrågor finansierat projektet ”Framgångsfaktorer för funktionella förskolelokaler”. Projektet studerar tre kommuners erfarenheter av framgångsfaktorer för att skapa och använda funktionella förskolelokaler som stödjer förskolans uppdrag och dagliga arbete. Denna delrapport utgör en första redovisning av projektets delstudie 1. Projektet planeras att slutföras under 2023 och då redovisas i en slutrapport.

Primär målgrupp för delrapporten är alla professioner som är involverade i processen att planera, bygga och använda lärmiljöer.

This report presents results from a graduate project related to the research project Success Factors for Functional Preschool Environments. The study was carried out within the master's program in Educational Sciences, focusing on school development, at the University of Gävle. The study is implicated as a case study in three different preschools, examines the preschool's learning environments, and sheds light on factors attributed to opportunities and limitations for the preschool's mission on preschool premises. Based on spatial theory, the preschools are examined based on physical, mental, and social dimensions. The three preschools are (1) a temporary modular, (2) a rebuild, and (3) a newly built preschool. The voices of the staff and the children about the learning environments are examined through interviews and pedagogical walkthroughs. The study results show that the physical spaces influenced the children's perceptions of which available activities could take place. Another result of the study is that physical-material factors, flexibility, pedagogical ideas, and values emerge as essential aspects in the design of learning environments. An overall conclusion based on this study is that participation and collaboration at several levels are critical success factors in developing learning environments.

In this workshop, we welcome researchers interested in transdisciplinary learning and questions of traversing norms within education - from preschool to higher education. Together we will explore the potentialities of merging STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and Arts (dance, drama, music, visual arts) into STEAM. The concept of STEAM education has become increasingly influential in many parts of the world during the last years. STEAM education is promoted as an arena for developing transdisciplinary knowledge and fostering innovative thinkers who can meet the demands of the future in sustainable ways (Ingold, 2019). One additional argument behind STEAM education is to motivate underrepresented groups, particularly girls, to engage with STEM (European Committee of the Regions, 2019; Ng & Ferguson, 2020). According to research, gender norms connected to STEM and to the arts, imply that some students, thinkings and doings are recognised by teachers and peers, whereas others are not. For example, girls and women have a more narrow space for participating and being recognised as learners in STEM (e.g. Heeg & Avraamidou, 2021; Stephenson, Fleer & Fragkiadaki, 2022), while boys and men have a more narrow space for participating and being recognised as learners in Arts (e.g. Hentschel, 2018; Oliver & Risner, 2017). This implies that children and students face different kinds of normative constraints when they are expected to engage with the world through separate disciplines, that is scientifically, technologically, artistically, engineeringly or mathematically. As we see it, transdisciplinary STEAM education harbours the potential to form new and norm-challenging ways of teaching and learning (Areljung & Günther-Hanssen, 2022). The transdisciplinary explorations during the workshop will focus on verbs connected to STEM and Arts. You do not need any specific background in STEM or Arts to participate. Expected outcomes are that the workshop will open up to new ways of being and learning, beyond current gender norms connected to different disciplines in education.  

Imagine that a group of thee year olds get access to digital cameras in a pre-school context without the guidance or the supervisions of teachers. What could happen? What will happen? What characterizes their photographic and digital practice? Do they express aesthetic preferences and how do they address the pre-school environment together with the gaze of the camera? When the teachers photograph children in pre-school it is often based on a documentary intention (Magnusson 2014; Svenning 2011). But children in pre-school do not use cameras in the same way as adults; they use them in a variety of other ways and with other strategies. The goal of this presentation is to highlight some possible aesthetic aspects of young children's camera usage. The visual material presented is part of an ethnographic study in an on-going thesis work focused on young children, photography and digital cameras. By taking the theoretical point of entry with new materialism and in particular together with Karen Barad (2003, 2007, 2010) and her agential realism, I understand the children's use of digital cameras as intra-active, mutual events where digital cameras, the preschool as much as the children are active participants in what is happening. The results presented and discussed here are preliminary and exploratory and they are based on empirical data from an on-going study.

This presentation describes a study that is exploring young children as camera users in preschool. The purpose is to investigate what characterizes their photographic and digital practice if they get access to digital cameras without the guidance or the supervisions from teachers. What are their interests, and their focus? Do they show aesthetic preferences?

When teachers photograph children in preschool it is often based in a documentary intention (Alnervik, 2013; Svenning, 2011). By taking the theoretical point of entry with new materialism and in particular together with Karen Barad (2003, 2007, 2010) and her agential realism, I understand the children's use of digital cameras as intra-active, mutual events. The study is conducted as a qualitative study with an ethnographic approach where children and researcher take part in the production of research material in two different preschool contexts.

Both parents and children have approved to take part in the study, and the chosen theoretical framework offers ethical considerations throughout the whole research process (Lenz Taguchi, 2010). Participating children have been asked during the study if their participation in the production of materials remains unchanged.

Children do not use cameras in the same way as adults in preschool; they use them in many different ways and with other and new strategies. They play with both photography and photographs and they develop knowledge about a democratic voice in relation to photography.The results that is presented and discussed here are preliminary and exploratory and they are based on empirical data from an on going study.

This presentation is based on a specific aspect of my on-going dissertation work. It focuses on the relationship between democracy and aesthetic expression in a Swedish preschool context, more specifically how photography as an aesthetic option in young children's hands can help to demonstrate democratic aspects of children's lives. On the basis of this focus, the presentation also highlights questions about children´s perspective, visual literacy (Elkins, 2008) and popular culture references with a starting point in the children's photographs and their photographic intra-actions (Barad, 2007). The research that takes part in the dissertation is based on a minor ethnographic study conducted in two different preschool settings together with tree year olds. The children have been offered a hands-on access to digital cameras in everyday activities. Any rules or specific issues have not accompanied the handover of the cameras, rather the children have been invited to use the camera in response to my question: What can you do with the camera and your preschool environment? As the children involved in the production of research material has not been instructed in how and to what they are supposed to use the cameras, they have had the opportunity to explore, investigate and they got to be mutual camera users. Children learned to see with the cameras and the cameras learned to see with the children. The framing capacity of digital cameras allowed children to see new and changed aspects of the world, and they studied and developed a changing visual sharpness. The children also contribute to changing ways of using cameras, which can teach both adults and other children something about cameras and their possibilities as ethical, photographic, democratic and aesthetic tools.    

Barad, Karen Michelle (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press

Elkins, James (red.) (2008). Visual literacy. New York: Routledge

I den här presentationen beskrivs en undersökning som tar utgångspunkt i ett prövande av hur a/r/tografi kan fungera som metod för att bidra till nya tankemönster och en förändrad förståelse av forskaren, konstnären och läraren inom högre utbildning. Som grund för undersökningen ligger digitala möten, dialoger och utbyten av texter och konstnärliga gestaltningar. Den data som produceras är polyfon i sin form och sitt uttryck och den lyfts fram i visualiserande assemblage (jfr Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Data analyseras och diskuteras genom ett synliggörande av intra-aktioner (Barad, 2007) och följer affekter (Kristevas, 1980, 1984) vilket i resultatet utvidgas till upptäckten av intra-konstnärliga-artikulationer, något som utmanar hierarkier och uppmuntrar det vilda hos a/r/tografen. Presentationen anknyter till konferensens tema både genom sin metod och sina resultat.  

Att höra, se och synliggöra – att vara tre år och få tillgång till en fotografisk visuell RÖST.

Föreliggande presentation handlar om några treåringars fotografiska visuella fokus genom tillgången till digitalkameror i förskolan. Några preliminära erfarenheter och upptäckter från ett första empiriskt material presenteras. Det empiriska materialet är ett första analysmaterial i en etnografisk studie som handlar om förskolebarns tillgång till en fotografisk visuell röst i förskolan och hur barnens intra-agerande med kamerorna kan förstås som del av deras fotografiska blick på förskolan.

Studien har två olika men sammanhängande fokus, där det första handlar om vilka slags bilder barnen tar och det andra är hur och på vilket sätt de intra-agerar med digitalkamerorna i den vardagliga verksamheten på förskolan. Vad kan barns fotografiska blick på förskolan säga om deras vardagsliv och hur kan resultatet av deras bilder förstås i relation till den fotografiska dokumentation som vanligen omger dem i förskolan? Ett av de mycket preliminära resultaten visar att det i barnens bilder går att se ett tydligt uttryck för närvaro som också visar sig i deras intra-agerande med kamerorna.

I den här presentationen är avsikten att lyfta fram ett antal aspekter av relationen mellan treåringar, fotografi, seende, estetik, visuell kommunikation och digitalkameror i förskolan. En av utgångspunkterna, i den större studie från vilken några aspekter av resultatet presenteras här idag, är antagandet att yngre barn i förskolan generellt blir inordnade som motiv för en fotografisk funktion hos kameror av olika slag (Lindgren, 2016; Magnusson, 2016, 2017; Svenning, 2011). Som motiv för kamerans fotografiska utblick ges barnen därmed inte möjlighet att agera visuella kommunikatörer och fotografer. De erbjuds då inte heller rätten till, eller kapaciteten i tillgången till en fotografisk röst – varken i relation till demokratiaspekter, vilka är inskrivna i förskolans läroplan, eller i relation med de estetiska uttrycksmöjligheter som kameror och fotografi kan erbjuda genom sammankopplingen mellan seende och gestaltande i världen.

Begreppet fotografisk röst har växt fram under arbetet med den större avhandlingsstudie ur vilken presentationen hämtar sitt material, en av förutsättningarna i studien är att barnen själva har tillgång till kameror (Magnusson, 2017). I begreppet fotografisk röst ryms möjligheten och kapaciteten att med kameror se tillbaka på omvärlden. I ett sådant tillbakablickande ryms både att barnen kan se tillbaka på pedagogerna som vanligen tittar på dem inom ramen för vardagspraktiken, men också möjligheten att utveckla estetiska omdömen (Barone & Eisner, 2012) som i sin tur kan bli del av barnens estetiska erfarenheter (Dewey, 1934/2005). I mötet mellan nymaterialistisk teoribildning (Barad, 2003, 2007, 2014), barnens fotograferande och deras fotografier i ett antal visuella händelser (Mirzoeff, 2002) framträder hur barnen tillsammans med kamerorna utvecklar ett estetiskt seende och att estetiskt gestaltande pågår i mötet med förskolans vardag. Kameran blir både del av barnens kroppar och en seendeapparat, samt producent av fotografier tillsammans med barnen. Kameran fungerar både inramande och utpekande. Studien väcker frågor kring hur yngre barns tillgång till kameror skulle kunna erbjuda öppningar mot utvecklandet av visuell kompetens, inte i första hand för att visa världen från barnens perspektiv, utan snarare för att synliggöra ett antal aspekter av den som vi vuxna ännu inte känner till.

The aim of this paper is to discuss young children's depicting of their preschool settings and what those can tell us.  What if children get access to digital cameras as documenting tools? Would that alter our understanding of children's everyday life? How can we interpret the practice of looking when the visual perspective of children meets the visual perspective of adults? In the Swedish preschool it is common for the adults to document the learning process of children. Their documentation represents the adult eyes on the everyday life and learning process of children, the children are rarely able to return the adult gaze.

The study presented in this paper is a study in progress and it is conducted as an ethnographic study in a number of different preschool settings. The focus is two folded, on one hand what do the children depict, and on the other hand what sort of intra-activity can be seen between the children, the camera and the room in the preschool setting? How can the result of this study tell us something about children´s perspective? Is it possible that visual methods and gaze perspective of small children can show us something in-between the known and the unknown of everyday life in preschool?

The aim of this presentation is to highlight and exemplify some aspects of the relation between, children's perspectives and ethics, based on the way that theory can help in illuminating the relation in between them. The analysed material is part of the result in a larger study with interest in three-year-olds and cameras in preschool. Discussions about ethics, young children's voice and their participation in research has been present in childhood research over a number of years (Christensen & James, 2008; Eide, Hognerstad, Svenning & Winger, 2010). By taking the theoretical point of entry with new materialism and in particular together with Karen Barad (2003, 2007) and her agential realism, I understand the relation between the researcher and the children as flattened out (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012). The research material that is presented is part of a qualitative study with an ethnographic and post-qualitative (Lather, 2013; Lather & St Pierre, 2013) approach. Parents and children have approved to take part in the study, and the chosen theoretical framework offers ethical considerations throughout the whole research process (Lenz Taguchi, 2010). By applying theories to the research material emerges how intra-actions (Barad, 2007) in-between three-year-olds and cameras becomes a guide for the researcher and the following research process. The children become pathfinders showing changes in the understanding of both ethics and children's perspective in research. The result may be of interest not only for researchers, but also for both teachers and children in preschool.

Genom att helt kort beskriva några förutsättningar i posthumanistisk/nymaterialistisk teoribildning (Barad 2007; Lenz Taguchi 2010; Åsberg et al. 2012) och sedan lyfta några pågående analyser från mitt avhandlingsarbete vill jag visa vad de teoretiska perspektiv jag använder gör med det empiriska materialet. Studien, ur vilken analyserna är del, handlar om treåringar och fotografi i förskolan. Barnen erbjuds inom ramen för den producerade empirin handgriplig tillgång till digitalkameror. Jag kommer i min presentation att synliggöra två av barnen-kamerornas fotografiska intra-aktioner. Genom att som i avhandlingen ingå i ett posthumanistiskt och därmed nymaterialistiskt teoretiskt landskap, med särskild utgångspunkt hos Karen Barad (2003, 2007), och genom detta synliggöra intra-aktioner mellan barn och kameror erbjuds en förändrad förståelse av fotografi i förskolan. Barnen och kamerorna gör sig begripliga för varandra på en mängd olika sätt. De analyser som jag kommer att lyfta visar några av dessa barnen-kamerornas tillblivelser med koppling till estetik. Barnen och kamerorna är deltagare i estetiska händelser och här synliggörs estetiska uttryck som visar sig i fotografisk handling och i färdiga fotografier. Genom att lyfta intra-aktioner mellan barnen, förskolan och kamerorna, som synliggjorts genom agentiska snitt i de pågående relationerna, är intentionen i presentationen att visa vad den teoretiska apparaten gör med materialet och hur jag förstår detta. De empiriska material som kommer att diskuteras och synliggöras kan betraktas som undersökande och instabilt, mitt i en pågående avhandlingsprocess.

In this article, the focus is on the entangled relation between digital technology, art activities, mathematics, literacy and children in Swedish preschool ateliers. As part of an ethnographic study, the researcher follows how children use digital technologies and non-digital materials (such as shells, pens, paper, wood, bubble wrap and light) to create and make the visual and aesthetic aspects of the technology seen. In the analysis of the children’s play-based and art-oriented activities in the atelier, the subjects of literacy and mathematics become visible. The analytical approach includes the use of sociocultural theory and multimodal theory, and looking at mathematics in accordance with the six organising principles described by Alan Bishop. The results show that the children’s activities with digital technology and non-digital artefacts appear to activate, expand and transform their understanding and use of literacy and mathematics.

The aim of this presentation is to highlight some aspects of the relation between, digitalization, play and aesthetics among children in preschool. The analysed material is part of an ongoing study. Research about digital competences and digital relations in preschool takes one of its starting points in discussions about digital competence as a key competence in relation to lifelong learning (EU, 2007; Letnes, 2017; Sönnerås, 2017). And at the same time in the possibilities of developing digital skills as part of daily activities in relation to processes of learning (cf. Letnes, 2017). By taking the theoretical point of entry within post-humanism, with Barad (2003, 2007), and in poststructuralism, with Deleuze and Guattari (2013), I understand the relation between the researcher, the digital tools, the preschool, and the children as flattened out (cf. Jackson & Mazzei, 2012). The research material that is presented is part of a qualitative study with an ethnographic as well as a post-qualitative (Lather, 2013; Lather & St Pierre, 2013) approach. Parents, children and teachers have agreed to participate in the study, and the chosen theoretical framework includes ethical considerations throughout the research process (cf. Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Magnusson, 2017). By following assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari, 2013) and looking at intra-actions (Barad, 2017) in digital events, the children and their digital relations show how important aspects of aesthetics and play are in relation to learning together with digital tools. The result may be of interest to researchers, as well as for teachers and children in preschool.

Vad händer om treåringar i förskolan får använda digitalkameror utan att de vuxna där instruerar dem om hur och till vad de skall användas? Vad kännetecknar små barns intra-aktiva digitalkamerapraktik? Gör barnen estetiska val med utgångspunkt i hur de använder och riktar kamerorna, mot och med, tingen omkring dem? När barn i en svensk förskolekontext blir fotograferade av pedagogerna så är det ofta utifrån en dokumenterande avsikt. Men barn i förskolan använder inte kamerorna på samma sätt som vuxna, de använder dem på en mängd andra sätt och med andra strategier. Målet i den här presentationen är att lyfta en möjlig estetisk aspekt av små barns kamerapraktik. Den utgör en del i ett pågående avhandlingsarbete med fokus på små barn och digitalkameror. I det empiriska materialet syns hur barnen sam-handlar med både tingen, relationerna och med platsen och det visar sig också att barnen ibland ger uttryck för estetiskt sam-handlingar med det som finns omkring dem. Genom att ta teoretisk utgångspunkt i posthumanistiska teorier och då med särskild utgångspunkt hos fysikern och feministen Karen Barad förstås barnens användande av digitalkamerorna som intra-aktiva, ömsesidiga händelser där digitalkamerorna lika mycket som barnen är aktiva deltagare i det som utspelar sig. Både barnen och kamerorna förstås som agentiska (Barad 2003, 2007). De resultat som presenteras och diskuteras här är preliminära och undersökande, de baserar sig på empiriskt material från ett pågående doktorandprojekt.

I svensk förskola fotograferar pedagoger både ofta och mycket samtidigt som barnen själva sällan får tillgång till kameror. Pedagoger riktar kamerornas dokumenterande blick mot människor och händelser och i fokus finns barnens utveckling och deras lärande. Utgångspunkten för dokumentationen är ofta de mål som är framskrivna i förskolans läroplan (Skolverket 2010).

Men vad händer om barnen själva får tillgång till kamerorna?

Vad händer när kamerorna får tillgång till barnen?

Genom att lyfta pågående resultat från mitt avhandlingsarbete om treåringar och fotografi där barn erbjuds handgriplig tillgång till digitalkameror kommer jag i min presentation att synliggöra ett antal av barnen-kamerornas fotografiska strategier, detta inom ramen för förskolans verksamhet. Genom att som i avhandlingen ingå i ett posthumanistiskt teoretiskt landskap, med särskild utgångspunkt hos Karen Barad (2003, 2007), och genom detta synliggöra sam-handlingar mellan barn och kameror erbjuds en förändrad förståelse av fotografi i förskolan. Barnen och kamerorna gör sig begripliga för varandra på en mängd olika sätt. Tillsammans gör de estetiska val och estetiska ställningstaganden som syns i fotografisk handling och i färdiga fotografier. Men barnen och kamerorna utmanar också makten i den vuxnes blick. Genom att lyfta sam-handlingar mellan barnen, förskolan och kamerorna, som synliggjorts genom agentiska snitt i de pågående relationerna, är intentionen i presentationen att särskilt lyfta några estetiska aspekter av intra-aktiviteten mellan barnen, kamerorna, förskolan och fotograferandet. De empiriska material som kommer att diskuteras och synliggöras kan betraktas som undersökande och instabilt, mitt i ett pågående avhandlingsarbete.

Föreliggande presentation har för avsikt att med hjälp av något som kan liknas vid en autoetnografisk metod (Ellington & Ellis, 2008) lyfta fram och diskutera en mindre forskningsstudie med fokus på estetiska uttrycksformer och estiska processer. Undersökningen inbegriper en intervention med lärare och studenter inom högre utbildning. Interventionen tar form som workshopar där först en grupp lärare och sedan en grupp studenter möter samma konstverk och samma konstpedagogiska uppgift. Med utgångspunkt i produktion av olika slags datamaterial och med erfarenheter från workshopar berör undersökningen bland annat frågor som: Vad kan estiska erfarenheter och estiska processer bidra med inom högre utbildning? Vilka dialoger och samtal öppnar den här typen av processer för?  Vilken roll spelar de gemensamma estetiska erfarenheterna för dessa samtal? Datamaterialet består av gestaltningar som inbegriper: lera, plast, tredimensionella konstruktioner, ljusbord, fotografi, glas, olika sorters papper, färger och tapetklister men också samtal och texter i olika former. I ett möjligt resultat berörs affekter och flyktlinjer (Deleuze & Guattari, 2015) med utgångspunkt i de estiska processerna och användandet av estetiska uttryck. Genom användandet av autoetnografi lyfts aspekter i data som lyser särskilt starkt (MacLure, 2010) och data som häftar vid forskarens intresse och inte lämnar henne ifred (MacRae, Hackett, Holmes, & Jones, 2018).  

This presentation will show and discuss some results from a research study where I was following a group of fifth graders during a short filmmaking project in a Swedish elementary school classroom.The project was designed as an intervention in relation to the ordinary school schedule and it was aimed at making short movies with IPads on the theme of what a Dream-school could be. The project had two parts: the pupils were introduced to film practice by challenging tasks and then they were to produce a short movie. The methods for analysing the research material includes Foucault's (1977, 1990) thinking of power and resistance, Deleuze and Guattari's (2013) use of the concept affect, and some of the visual aspects will be discussed together with the concept of aesthetic attraction (Magnusson, 2017). Initially, questions were asked about what sort of film, and with what sort of visual expressions, the pupils would compose out of the theme? But during the project, the questions were widened and they also came to include an interest in the relationships between the pupils, their bodies, the school, and the visual medium? But also towards what was possible to say and do in relation to the task. The results show that matters of power and control in the relations between the children seemed more central than moviemaking. Thereby the project provided opportunities for change in the relations of power among the pupils and the visual medium played an interesting role in this.

This article explores and displays some of the literacy events taking place in the context of early childhood education in Sweden. More specifically, the literacy events are part of the educational practices in the atelier of Reggio Emilia inspired preschools in Sweden. As parts of an ethnographic study of aesthetic activities, including digital technology, these literacy events awoke the researcher's interest. The literacy events are analysed from a sociocultural perspective reinforced by the use of multimodal theory. The results show how the literacy events in the ateliers become playful explorations. The children use the atelier's specific cultural and social potentiality to explore and develop written and oral language as part of the visual and aesthetic literacy practices taking place there.  

In Swedish preschools cameras are often used by teachers to visualize learning and development on the basis of goals in the curriculum (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2016). But what happens if the young preschool children themselves become camera users? How do they target the cameras? How do they direct their gazes? What sort of intra-actions (Barad, 2003, 2007) become visible? Who, or what, become visible in the photographs, and through the children´s relationships with the cameras.

This presentation is based on the results of a recently completed study where three-year-olds were given access to digital cameras in preschool and where their use of them was not controlled or regulated in any particular way. A key point of departure for the study was that of the frequent occurrence of documentation through photography in preschool activities, as well as the fact that adults working in preschool usually are the ones behind the cameras (cf. Lindgren, 2016; Magnusson, 2017; Svenning, 2011). The study was conducted using an ethnographic method (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2011) further strengthen by a post-qualitative approach (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012; Lather, 2013; MacLure, 2013; St. Pierre & Jackson, 2014 Lather & St. Pierre, 2013) and it takes its theoretical basis in new materialism (Barad, 2007, 2012; Lenz Taguchi, 2010).

The result shows that the children´s access to photographic observations gives them access to knowledge about looking and the possibilities of looking. Furthermore, it also gives adults access to how children look, make visible, connect, and develop knowledge of and in their own lives. In the hands of the children, the cameras, as well as photographs and their mutually entangled becoming, form part of the children's lives instead of gazes from the side line that makes assumptions about the processes the children are involved in. Since the cameras and children can visually both include and exclude what is around them, they test not only photographic looking and seeing in everyday life, but also the possibilities of democracy. By doing so they also show aspects of children´s perspectives and aspects of ethics and aesthetics in a broader sense.

This article contains some of the results from a recently completed small-scale qualitative research study with a focus on three-year-olds and digital cameras in preschool. The aim of the study was to give children access to the agency of being camera users. The study is based on two assumptions: that photographic documentation of young children’s learning and their development is an essential feature in Swedish preschools, and that it´s almost always the teachers who use the camera devices. The results show - with the help of a new materialistic theoretical framework (Barad, 2003, 2007, 2014; Lenz Taguchi, 2010) - that children, together with the cameras, illustrate changed power relations when it comes to who is looking at whom, and that they make visible new and changed photographic aspects of daily activities in preschool.

In this paper, we introduce a meta-approach, used to analyse the results from two separate studies. One is concerning preschool teachers' understanding in the area of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), the other concern children’s agency in their use of digital technology as part of Art activities. The aim is to develop knowledge of the capacity of work in Art concerning the subject matters in STEM. Over the past decades, the concept of STEAM and STEM has been highlighted, discussed and used in educational research in different ways and Atkinson (2018) corroborate and conclude that STEM misses the quality and the capacity in the A of STEAM. The conceptual framework is the re-reding of two studies where the analytical concepts of the teacher’s perspective and children's agency is used (e.g. Corsario, 2011). With the use of a qualitative approach, we conduct new analyses of earlier research (e. g. Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2011). The methodologic design is based on the development of a meta-approach and the use of a two-slot chart as a model for conducting the analyses. The research follows guidelines for research ethics adopted in social sciences in Sweden (codex.vr.se) and all participants have agreed to take part in the research. The relatively open and often less goal-directed processes in the atelier can open for the educator’s knowledge of the capacity of work with Art concerning the subject matters in STEM. The result may be of interest for researchers, and for teachers working with STEM education. 

This presentation highlights how three- to five-year-old children and their educators perceive and experience the education environment in the Swedish preschool. As with earlier research (Eriksson Bergström, 2013; Lippman and Matthews, 2019; Nordin-Hultman, 2004), a starting point in the research performed is that the physical environment plays an essential role in what type of educational practice can take place in preschool. The theoretical point of departure in the study is posthumanism. The data is analysed using diffractive readings (Barad 2014; Magnusson, 2021) to see the entangled intersection of the children's and the educator's experience of the education environment. The study was performed as a multiple case study (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2018), including preschools in three Swedish municipalities. The data was generated using pedagogical walk-throughs (www.ncl.ac.uk/cored/)  with educators and camera tours (Clark, 2010; Magnusson and Åkerblom, 2022) with children. Teachers, children and their guardians have agreed to participate in the study, and the chosen theoretical framework includes ethical considerations throughout the research process (cf. Barad, 2014; Magnusson, 2017). The results contribute to research that touches on the intersection between teachers' and children's perception and experience of the educational environment in preschool and shows how children view the educational environment as a place for play and learning. However, the result can also stimulate educators working in a preschool in their process of designing or re-designing their preschool environment. By also making children's perspectives on the physical environments visible, the result can influence educators and principals in the education practice. 

The aim of this thesis is to examine what happens when three-year-olds are given access to digital cameras, and what shape and form children’s photographic capacity takes within the framework of everyday pre-school activities. The notion that young children in pre-school rarely get to use cameras themselves, and that they take part in photographs produced by pre-school educators as part of an ongoing documenting practice rooted in the curriculum is the point of departure. The study has been conducted through an ethnographic approach further strengthened by post-qualitative thinking, where the research material was produced together with children in two different pre-schools. This material includes the children’s intra-actions with the cameras as well as the photographs that emerge during the course of the study. The thesis moves within a posthumanist theoretical framework, with a special focus on new materialism and agential realism, where humans and non-humans are seen as mutual performative agents. The theoretical perspective permeates the entire study, and does not, therefore, only serve as a support for analyses. Through diffractive readings, the results show that children and cameras approach pre-school and its visual events in a manner that is not recognisable in previous experiences of how pre-school and the life of children have formerly been made visible. In this study, the children use the cameras to create resistances and to look back at the educators, as well as to show what relations come into being with materials, peers, places, spaces and knowledge formation. The children, together with the cameras, also make visible the power of the eye to direct and display, where the cameras also come to be an aesthetic tool with the capacity to both see and make visible in everyday life. This, in turn, also brings to light aspects of ethics and leads to the breaking up of more traditional and normative photographic actions and expressions.

Over the past decade post-humanism, new materialism and aspects of post-qualitative research methods have been used in early childhood research in the Nordic countries. This presentation concerns the visual material from an ethnographic study in preschool in which three-year-olds were given access to digital cameras in their daily activities (Magnusson, 2017, 2018). In the study, the children's photographs and the video data produced by the researcher were analysed by using diffractive readings (Barad, 2007, 2014). As a result of using these analytical readings, the researcher read the children's photographs through and with the video data. The two types of different visual materials were also read through previous research, the researcher's own experience and the potential of the theoretical framework.

By applying and using diffractive readings, not only did people and their actions in the analyses appear, but there was also a strong focus on the digital cameras, the video camera, directed and re-directed gazes, and they were all regarded as active, entangled and performing forces that took place in the analyses. By using diffractive readings, the analyses came to move back and forth and include not only data but also the ongoing data production. The presentation aims to highlight how the diffractive readings act as an analytical tool and how they can ask questions as well as demonstrate previously unknown knowledge and experience that concern children and children's perspective in their daily preschool activities. I propose, supported by the results, in the study concerned, and with the support of other theorists and researchers (Barad, 2007, 2014; Lenz Taguchi & Palmer, 2013) that the diffractive readings indicate knowledge and knowing we do not yet know –and that this is what constitutes the strength in the use of the analytical method in education research.

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, N.C. ; London: Duke University Press.

Barad, K. (2014). Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together Apart. Parallax, 20(3), 168–187.

Lenz Taguchi, H., & Palmer, A. (2013). A more ‘livable’ school? A diffractive analysis of the performative enactments of girls’ ill-/well-being with(in) school environments. Gender and Education, 25(6), 671–687.

Magnusson, L. O. (2017). Treåringar, kameror och förskola – en serie diffraktiva rörelser. [Three-year-olds, cameras and preschool: A series of diffractive movements]. Doctoral dissertation, University of Gothenburg. Sweden.

Magnusson, L. O. (2018). Photographic agency and agency of photographs: Three-year-olds and digital cameras. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 43 (3), 34–42.

This article focuses on how the capacity of diffractive readings is put to work in a study of two different types of visual material in research conducted in a preschool. The analysis with the help of –the language of the flat ontology– and the diffractive readings take place in educational research among three-year-olds. Children’s photographs and video recordings produced by the researcher are seen as data that both interfere with and affects the outcome of the study. Diffractive methodologies are used to connect the research and the two kinds of visual data with previous research, some theoretical concepts from Karen Barad’s agential realism and the researcher’s experience of becoming and learning throughout the development of the entangled research process.

Encounters with visual arts are part of the cultural context of many adults in western society. But how do young children's encounters with visual arts in the preschool take place and can they be part of the preschool’s educational practice? This is the starting point for the research presented in this article, which concerns young children's creative relationships with visual arts and how encounters with artists' work inspire their aesthetic practices in an early childhood context. The data consists of visual and textual documentation analysed by means of a thematic analysis. The findings are seen in the light of a sociocultural perspective and highlight how interactions and engagement with visual arts and artistic processes can stimulate children's visual and cultural voices. Moreover, the findings suggest that the art room, i.e. the atelier, becomes a place in which children can develop an analytical eye, creativity, visual capacity and knowledge whilst engaging in bodily and sensory experiences.

Ambitionen med denna bok är att synliggöra och inspirera till estetiskt skapande arbete i förskolepedagogisk verksamhet. Synen på förskolans estetiska verksamhet är i ständig förändring och de senaste decennierna har rumsliga begrepp som snickarrum och målarrum bytts ut mot ateljé, och i stället för temaarbete används nu ofta projekt och processinriktat arbete. Men vad händer i den vardagliga skapande verksamheten, hur möts lärare, barn och material? Hur möts digital och analog teknik, och hur används rummen och omvärlden? Det är några av de frågor som den här boken tar upp.

Under arbetet med boken utkristalliserar sig ett antal centrala aspekter som visat sig fruktbara för pedagoger och lärare att reflektera över i relation till skapande verksamhet. Dessa är bland andra pedagogens roll, hur tid och rum organiseras, lekens betydelse liksom förhållandet mellan process och produkt. Bokens tre kapitel berör dessa aspekter på olika sätt, mer eller mindre teorinära, men den praktiska verksamheten i förskolan är central och framlyft i alla kapitel. Boken visar därmed ett stort antal exempel på skapande och estetiskt arbete från olika förskolor.

Boken är användbar i lärarutbildningar för yngre barn men också i arbetslag.

Over the past decades, the concepts of STEM and STEAM has been discussed and used in educational research in different ways. This paper is based on the results from two separate studies. One concerning preschool teachers' understanding of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, STEM, in relation to teaching in preschool. The other study concern children’s perspective and strategies in their use of digital technology concerning visual aspects of arts, the A in STEAM. The purpose of this paper is to compare and connects results from the two studies out of the question: What does the A in STEAM add to manners of teaching the subjects referred to in STEM? One theoretical point of departure derives from Shulman's (1986) theory of how knowledge develops in teaching and that teachers use special knowledge in teaching, i.e. pedagogical content knowledge, PCK. We also relate to the concepts of children’s perspective and child perspective (Halldén, 2003; Sommer, Pramling Samuelsson, & Hundeide, 2011) as well as the complexity of diffractive readings (Barad 2014; Magnusson, 2017). The two studies that are in focus are conducted in different ways, with varying methodological approaches and analysed with different theoretical perspective. In this paper, we want to do a meta-analysis with the help of the concepts of children’s perspective and child perspective. By doing that we hope to find new knowledge and thereby contribute to teacher knowledge about teaching STEAM areas. The research follows guidelines for research ethics adopted in the humanities and social sciences in Sweden (codex.vr.se). The preliminary results of the meta-analyses presented in this paper concern how different aspects of the intercept of teacher’s perspective/child perspective and children's perspective, in the two studies, can come to show learning, teaching/education and knowledge practice concerning the contribution of A in STEAM in relation to STEM. In an extension, we mean that the result can influence teacher knowledge and their didactic choices in teaching when it comes to the selection of content and strategies. The study can also contribute to a deeper understanding of what A in STEAM mean from children’s perspective in preschool education.

The study presented in this article investigates how the curriculum is implemented and transformed by teachers in mixed-age and age-homogeneous groups, the most common age-constellations in the Swedish preschool. The data was collected through group interviews with preschool teachers. The interviews were transcribed and analysed with the support of thematic analysis and connected to a sociocultural perspective on learning. The findings show that the teachers in the different age formations use both the same and different teaching strategies, which means that the curriculum is implemented and transformed in different ways. The teaching and learning events in the age-homogenous groups appear to be more structured and planned, whereas in the mixed-aged groups the teaching is more spontaneous and embedded in the everyday activities.