Mission: Education! Does the profession matter? : Does the profession matter? A phenomenographic study of the concept of preschool education made from interviews by preschool educators and their interpretations

The purpose of our study is to examine preschool teachers’ and child minders’ perceptions about the education of preschool children and if the profession plays a factor when teaching at a preschool. We have made qualitative interviews and the phenomenographic analysis concludes that both child minders and preschool teachers consider themselves to be qualified to teach and have the responsibility to educate, but that the preschool teachers have the ultimate responsibility to plan the lessons and make the follow ups if needed. In the Swedish preschools, all educators work in teams and our study shows that all educators find the team way of working valuable. Active educators express the importance of collaboration with words like “work together” and “...only one preschool teacher can’t do all the work”. These are the issues we address in this study: Are there differences and similarities in the perceptions of the concept of teaching in the respondents? How do the two professions interpret the text about teaching in the regulatory documents? Whose mission it is to teach, are there differences and similarities in respondents' perceptions