Educare. 2014:2, Childhood, learning and didactics

The articles in this volume are all related to the National Research Schools
of Childhood, Learning and Didactics (RSCLD). The research schools are an
expression of a government interest both to strengthen education and research
in early years—especially in areas like language, values, science and
mathematics—and to involve preschool teachers and teachers in research
development. The role of research in developing ECEC and school policies
has also increased. Different research programs and school research institutes
are funded with the aim of contributing to policy making, researchbased
recommendations and better practices.
The Research Schools of Childhood, Learning and Didactics focus on the
development of knowledge in relation to preschool and school in the early
years. They draw on the institutional cooperation between five universities/
university colleges in Sweden: Gothenburg, Linköping, Karlstad, Kristianstad
and Malmö University (host university). The contributing
researchers represent subjects such as pedagogy, subject theory and didactics,
and present a thematic, multi-disciplinary approach to ‘Childhood,
Learning and Didactics’. RSCLD is anchored in the respective teacher educations
at the five contributing institutions. To date, we have administrated
three different research schools for preschool teachers and teachers with this
focus.
An important and emphasised part of the program is to problematise and
develop subject-specific didactics as a field of research, beyond the prevalent
focus on older children. Questions to do with children’s learning, didactic
choices and educational positions need to be problematised and re-examined
at a time with many societal changes.
New formations of childhood and learning in transgression force us to
meet demands for new and viable knowledge. In this context, subject knowledge
and didactics are scrutinised as educational practices in preschool and
school for early years. The research schools pay special attention to the
child’s perspective, to democracy and to children’s early mathematical and
linguistic development related to multimodal media, subject theory and teaching practice. The research schools are also examining how the fields of
natural science and sustainable development, as well as value education, are
realised in preschool and in the early years of school.
Early Childhood Education and Care has never been in focus as much as
in recent years. In OECD- EU- and national governing documents and
agreements, one repeatedly finds expressions like ‘Start Early - Starting
Strong - Readiness for School’. To draw quotations from some influential
documents and researchers, ‘Improving pre-primary provision and widening
access to it are potentially the most important contributions that school systems
can make to improving opportunities’ (OECD Starting Strong 11), and
‘Early skills breed later skills because early learning begets later learning. …
Investment in the young is warranted’ (Heckman & Masterov, 2007).