Tingens betydelse för barns agerande i förskolan - En kvalitativ studie om den pedagogiska miljöns effekt på barns fria lek

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the physical environment and children’s play and actions. We want to find out how the environment affects children’s behavior and whether it goes in harmony with the preschool teachers thoughts and educational purposes or not. Furthermore, the aim is to investigate how the children act in the environment and if and how objects affect children’s play and interaction in a certain direction. In order to do this, we observed children’s free play in two different rooms at a preschool on three different occasions. To document our observations we used field notes. We supplemented the observations with three interviews with professional preschool teachers. This was done in order to capture the preschool teacher’s views of the environment versus the children’s behavior in it. In our analysis of our empirical data, we used Bruno Latour’s actor network theory. This study is based on children's actions, but also on educators' perspectives. We want to point out that the purpose is not to show right or wrong, but rather to highlight the educational environment from different perspectives while focusing on inclusion and participation. The result indicates that the environment and materials affect children’s play to a greater extent than expected. The teacher’s communicated a clear educational idea about the “home room” in the interviews. While dressing gowns and roleplay had a central place in the “homeroom”, it was harder to identify an educational idea in the larger common room. On the other hand, the observations indicated that the building toys had a relatively high force of attraction with the children in the larger room. When it came to inclusion, the educators talked about inclusion based on the availability of different materials but also that the available material connects to children’s interests or not. Emphasis was also put on assistive devices to support children with special needs, such as linguistic difficulties