"Sluta! Du får inte vara med!" : En normkritisk essä om pedagogens inflytande på barns fria lek i förskolan

Title: "Stop! You can't play with me!" A norm-critical essay on how the teacher influences children's free play at preschool Abstract This essay is based on two cases describing two children in a few different situations at preschool. These cases form the basis of a dilemma, discussing how involved the teacher should be in children's free play. The dilemma poses questions regarding the teacher’s actions when a child does not want to play with other children, as well as a child that seems incapable of playing with other children. The cases help highlight the implicit idea that children should play with other children. My purpose is to investigate what implicit normative ideas exists about children playing at preschool and to what extent they form my own notion about the necessity for children to be able to play. The method used in this paper is a reflective essay. This enables it possible for me to reflect on my role as a teacher and how I act in the different cases. The reflective part of the essay focuses on answering posed questions, with the basis of discussion being the Swedish curriculum for preschool and its influences. Further, the essay discusses the origin of my own ideas about how children should play originate from. The focus then moves to a sociocultural perspective, specially how children learn and develop when they interact with each other. This section of the essay also discusses norms at preschool, developed from an interpretation of the curriculum, as well as existing ideas about children playing and children as competent learners. Finally, the essay also discusses current research on children and how they play, as well as current research on the importance of involved teachers, put in relation to the two children portrayed in the presented cases. My conclusion is that the teacher is subject to the curriculum, and needs to act according to its content. A significant part of the work is creating a safe environment for the children. The curriculum of the Swedish preschool, and the implicit theories that help shape it, act as a guide to the teacher’s actions. It states that children should explore the world around them; hence there are norms about how a child should play. Keywords: preschool, free play, social interaction, norms, involved teachers, curriculum