"It's fun!" : A study of how teachers are using the aesthetic learning processes when they work with science in preschool

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how teachers perceive that they work with science in preschool through aesthetic learning processes as tools both in the indoor and outdoor environment and make visible what the educators' underlying beliefs are that affect how they perceive aesthetic learning processes as tools used to deepen children's understanding of different scientific phenomena. This is an interview study using the phenomenographic approach as a means and method to make visible and report on teachers' views on how aesthetic learning processes can be used to extend preschool children's learning about science. The results are analyzed and discussed based on John Dewey's theoretical ideas about children's learning, aesthetics and science. The study clearly shows that teachers' views on aesthetic learning processes and how they can be used in the work whit science is very divided and in some cases unreflective. The most striking results are that teachers often are unaware that they make use of aesthetic learning processes because they have a more limited view of what it is than we have in the paper. All informants have science as a core subject. Their focus of the activity is located at the showing and visualizeing of scientific phenomena and some of them express that they submit the aesthetic learning processes to their colleagues or that they collaborate with someone who has training in some art form. During these collaborations the educators are responsible of their respective subjects, and rarely have deeper knowledge about the other topic