Barn med kultur : En diskursanalys av hur kultur och kulturarv framställs i förskolans läroplan och i fem verksamhetsplaner

The purpose of the study is to highlight and analyse the discursive representations of culture and cultural heritage of the Swedish preschool curriculum and five local development plans where these concepts are used. The theoretical understanding is based on social constructionism. The theory regard the world as socially constructed and that the language is a creator of our reality. Our experiences help create our identity, and is seen as something mutable. The study also has a discourse analytical approach both as a theory and a method. Our empirical data consists of the preschool curriculum and five local development plans that contains culture and cultural heritage. The results present two different themes regarding how culture and cultural heritage are constructed. We named the first theme “children as bearers of culture in a national discourse”, and the other “children as creators in an aesthetic discourse.” In the discourse of the first theme, culture is portrayed as an object we can study and comprehend. These discourses have handed us the opportunity to demonstrate how children become culture bearers although they do not mention that they are creating culture – in contrast to how the second theme demonstrates how children are attributed to the position of cultural creators. The conclusions of the study show how culture and cultural heritage are presented in an unreflective way. Therefore, we highlight the need of reflection in preschool on how we – in both speech and writing – construct children with culture. It is important that children of any cultural discourses, both those identified as “children as cultural creators” and those identified as “children as bearers of culture,” as having the power to play a part in the creation of culture. The study intends to contribute to a greater awareness of how the concepts of culture and cultural heritage are constructed and reproduced in preschool