de yngsta barnens utforskande i förskolan
Av Berggren, Helene
This dissertation explores how very young children (1–3 years old) in Swedish preschools encounter and engage with science through everyday play and interactions. The study aims to generate knowledge about how emergent science learning takes shape in early childhood education and how children’s actions, individually and together with peers and preschool teachers, can be understood as scientific meaning-making. The theoretical framework is grounded in symbolic interactionism, highlighting how meaning emerges through social interaction and the use of social objects. Methodologically, the study draws on a constructivist grounded theory approach, based on ethnographic fieldwork including video observations, field notes, and informal conversations in several preschool settings. The analysis identifies recurring patterns in children’s meaning-making: exploring independently (en-skapar), co-creating with peers (kamrat-skapar), and jointly creating with teachers (barn-pedagog-skapar). Central strategies in these processes are repetition, variation, and synthesis, which support children’s bodily, cognitive, and conceptual engagement with scientific phenomena such as gravity, friction, and magnetism. The study also shows that teachers play a crucial role: when they respond to and extend children’s initiatives, spontaneous and meaningful science learning opportunities arise, whereas children’s explorations risk being overlooked when teachers are absent or inattentive. The findings contribute to the growing field of research on emergent science by providing insights into how very young children’s everyday actions can be seen as foundational scientific practices. Pedagogical implications include the need for attentive and responsive teaching, access to rich environments and materials, and the use of scientific language to gradually deepen children’s conceptual understanding. The study underscores preschool as a key arena for fostering curiosity, wonder, and long-term interest in science, not by transmitting facts but by creating conditions for children’s own explorations in dialogue with peers, materials, and educators