Environment is everything : A qualitative study of the process of planning and design of the pre-school educational environment

This graduate work is about didactic issues related to the preschool environment. The study aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of how the preschool teachers can plan and design the indoor environment to promote children's development and learning. We will also examine how the work of the preschool indoor environment relates to the kindergarten curriculum. This will be examined through qualitative interviews with teachers at a preschool in Botkyrka municipality. The thesis is based on an inductive study method so the theoretical approach has been chosen by the informants' responses. As a complement to the previous research, we have chosen to base our study in Vygotsky's educational psychology to clarify the interactions between the environment and children's development and learning. The informants in our study described, among other things, that their work with preschool indoor environment is based on an environmental document, which is an evolving supplement to the kindergarten curriculum. They create various "corners" or base environments where children can meet and learn from each other. These base environments are designed in the way that they are self-explanatory, that is, the children develop into independent individuals