| dc.description.abstract | The aim of this master thesis is to study what planned activities group leaders in kindergartens report to carry out with children under the age of three. Group leaders are qualified ECEC teachers with the pedagogical responsibility in a group of children with multiple assistants. There was a large increase in the number of children under the age of three attending kindergartens in Norway around the year 2005. This has drawn the attention of researchers and policy makers, and has led to more research on structural qualities and child-child or child-adult interactions. However, little research has been conducted on the contents of the pedagogical work done with the youngest children. While interacting, the child and the pedagogue will share a common focus on “something”. I wanted to know what this “something” could be in a kindergarten setting with the youngest children. The kindergarten content will be seen in relations to research and ECEC teacher education, views of learning and the Norwegian kindergartens didactic methods. In addition, I discuss different views and understandings of the term planned.
Through an online survey, 117 group leaders have answered questions about how often they carried out different categories of planned activities with the children in their group. They also describe the activities in their own words. The results show a comparatively large amount of planned activities taking place with children under three. The most common activities are circle time, crafts and excursions. Through the group leaders’ descriptions of activities, they appear to have a broad and varied understanding of the term planned. This, however, varies between the different activities. Teachers who have more experience with children under the age of three also report to have more knowledge about
planning activities for this age group than teachers with less experience. | language |
