Att googla sig fram i förskoledjungeln : En kritisk diskursanalys av tio förskolors hemsidor

This essay aims to discern the discoursive practices of ten preschools in Stockholm through a critical discourse analysis of their websites. This reveals how the preschools construct their identity within the discourse of preschool, and whether they reproduce or challenge that discourse. The preschools were chosen by the results of a specific question regarding user recommendations in the user survey that Stockholms Stad sends to all parents with children in their care every year. Five preschools with top results and five at the bottom were chosen to make it possible to analyse any effects on how the preschools portray themselves related to the difference in survey results. The method is critical discourse analysis as Fairclough has described it. The theory of social constructivism is the underlying framework for how we understand discourse. In analysing the web sites several themes of discoursive practices emerged. Five of those were recurring, namely parents, workplace and child view/quality management, environment and finally co-workers. To understand the position of the preschools within the discourse we have tried to show how the dominant discourse looks today, starting with the texts that regulate preschools in Sweden, the curriculum for preschool and the School Law. Other discussions on the discourse such as newspaper articles and previous research bring further clarity to how it can be understood. We have found that very little can be said about a specific preschool by reading its website. The discourse of preschool as a whole is manifested in every website, and thus reproduced. There were very few examples of practices that challenged the dominant discourse. Because of the similarity of the portrayed practices and the lack of measurable factors very little can be said about the quality of any specific preschool by using its own presentation. This is in accordance with earlier research on school marketing and websites