The paper identifies a contradiction that exists amongst Danish child-care workers between care as a medium for children's well-being and development and teaching as a medium for children's learning. This contradiction is often expressed as care versus learning and day care/preschool versus school. This paper proposes that this is a false contradiction that can keep early childhood education in a romantic child-centered position. Instead, the paper identifies a unity of care, teaching, and upbringing as a starting point for children's well-being, learning, development, and Bildung. Because the concept of care is often more related to practical rather than educational activities, the concept is defined through philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical dimensions.In Denmark, early childhood education is very much related to care. First of all care is seen as a practical activity where the adult protects the child and meets the child's needs and demand for food, rest, and human interaction in order to contribute to children's security and well-being, which is seen as a starting point for their development.Pedagogues or-using a North American term-child-care workers 1 take care of children in day care centers 2 while their parents are working. The Danish history of S. Broströ m (
The aim of the study is to explore how Nordic Early Childhood Education and Care policies frame values education in preschools with a special focus on the values of democracy, caring and competence. The study is part of a larger Nordic project, Values education in Nordic preschools: Basis of education for tomorrow, the aim of which is to explore values education from various perspectives, policy levels, institutional levels and personal levels. The study applies Habermas's theoretical ideas of communicative actions, lifeworld, and the system. Here the focus is on the system level, namely, values in national curriculum guidelines that serve as the basis of pedagogical practices in preschools in the Nordic countries. Thematic research analysis described by Braun and Clarke inspired the qualitative analysis of the documents. In addition, a quantitative language-based approach was applied to the study. Keywords related with democratic, caring and competence values were selected. The findings reveal different dimensions and meanings of the three value fields, such as democracy as being and/or becoming; care as fulfilment of basic needs and an ethical relationship; and competence values as learning for sociality and academic skills.
This paper discusses trends in contemporary Danish early childhood education and care (ECEC). Data are various policy documents, along with material from ongoing research projects in which the authors are involved. It is claimed that contemporary policy on Danish day care services has a tendency to emphasize narrow curriculum improvements and standardized testing. The democratic dimensions are still relatively strong, but at the moment these dimensions are interpreted within a skills-and-testing framework, which is leading to a situation where the political masquerades as the technical.Keywords: Denmark; policy; day care services; curriculum; social pedagogyThe claims and viewpoints in this paper are linked to research projects and paradigms that we, as a research unit, are currently involved in. We will start by sketching this material to provide a research context for the debate that follows.Two distinct approaches to early childhood education and care can be identified (OECD, 2001(OECD, , 2006: the early education approach and the social pedagogy approach.The early education approach generally results in a more centralizing and academic strategy towards curriculum content and methodology, while the social pedagogy tradition remains more local, child-centered and holistic.Broström (Broström, 2002(Broström, , 2006a(Broström, , 2006b(Broström, , 2009b) is working to develop a possible new paradigm in early childhood education and care. Departing from a traditional Danish perspective of social pedagogy, Broström is reaching for curriculum objectives such as children's all-round personal development, well-being, participation and critical thinking by bridging the concepts of care, upbringing and teaching into a critical framework oriented towards education for democracy. He does not shrink from understanding his proposal for an ECEC curriculum theory in relation to the teaching of con- Aarhus University 3 THE DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, AARHUS UNIVERSITY -THE RESEARCH UNIT OF CHILDHOOD, LEARNING AND CURRICULUM STUDIES tent, and thus points toward the early education position, but at the same time, he brings care and children's perspectives to the forefront. This rethinking of the social pedagogy approach is consistent with the policy statements made by the Danish committee on starting school (Skolestartsudvalget, 2006), and both challenges day care professionals to reflect on curriculum theory and challenges primary school teachers to maintain and nurture a caring dimension in their teaching practices. Department of Curriculum Research The Danish School of EducationRecent developments in several fields of research including social and cultural psychology, critical sociology and neuropsychology suggest that young children are biologically prepared for life and yet they are shaped by and completed through each person's active participation in socio-cultural environments and activities (Bråten, 2009; Stern, 2004) This provides postmodern research with the following ground rules: 1) To conduct rese...
Förskoleforskning www.nordiskbarnehageforskning.no issn 1890-9167 vol 5 nr 11 sid 1-14 nordisk barnehageforskning utgitt av høgskolen i oslo og akershus og nettverket barnehageliv AIMS AND METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.