Methodology for Research with Early Childhood Education and Care Professionals

This open access book addresses the growing trend in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) research named collaborative knowledge building in which researchers and ECEC personnel collaborate. This kind of research encompasses a number of approaches, such as design studies, action studies, Learning Studies, Lesson Studies, and combined research and development studies.There are important differences between these approaches, but they also share some features, which makes it possible to see them as examples of a particular tradition of knowledge building. Collaborative knowledge building constitutes close ties between developing practices of early childhood education and care, and generating empirically grounded theoretical knowledge.This book contributes to the methodology of practices-developing research by mapping this movement through exemplifying themes actualised in such studies, and through conceptualizing important andrecurring gains and challenges. It also describes how the latter can be taken on.  

Part I: Introduction.- Chapter 1: Enabling knowledge development relevant for ECEC.- Part II: Example studies.- Chapter 2: A retrospective view on researchers’ and preschool teachers’ collaboration: The case of developing children’s learning in preschool.- Chapter 3: Exploring mixed roles and goals in collaborative research: The example of toddler mathematics education.- Chapter 4: Managing the tension between the known and the unknown in knowledge-building: The example of the Play-Responsive Early Childhood Education and Care (PRECEC).- Chapter 5: Success of and barriers to workshop methodology: Experiences from Exploration and Pedagogical Innovation Laboratories (EX-PED-LAB).- Chapter 6: Opening up new spaces for action: Challenges of participatory action research for preschool practice transformation in an introductory unit for immigrant children.- Chapter 7: Integrating digital technologies in teaching and learning through participation: Case studies from the Xlab – Design, Learning, Innovation laboratory.- Chapter 8: Interprofessional dialogue and the importance of contextualising children’s participation: A collaboration between different disciplines round new technology.- Chapter 9: Mutuality in collaboration: A development project for teaching in multilingual ECEC.- Part III: Theoretical and conceptual discussions and tools.- Chapter 10: The importance of de-reifying language in research with early childhood education and care professionals: A critical feature of workshop methodology.- Chapter 11: Responding to wicked tensions and problems in practices-developing research.- Chapter 12: Terminological and conceptual meta-commentaries on practices-developing research.