Are newly qualified preschool teachers ready for today’s mandate? Principals’ views in Sweden

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the discussion concerning adaptations and improvements of preschool teacher education. Such changes are crucial, because many newly qualified preschool teachers struggle to live up to the requirements the profession places upon them. This study is conducted in Sweden, where early childhood education has a long tradition and is well established. Simultaneously, Swedish preschool education follows the international tendency of schoolification in early childhood education. A Q methodological study design was selected to investigate the views of preschool principals on newly qualified preschool teachers. Q method results were enriched with qualitative data from a written questionnaire and findings reveal a consensus among the 55 participants. This confirms previous research stating that newly qualified preschool teachers are perceived as competent in planning teaching and adhering to curriculum intentions. At the same time, this study shows that the increasingly academicized preschool teacher education does not seem to sufficiently prepare the next generation of preschool teachers to build relationships with guardians and colleagues. The study suggests the need for a comprehensive understanding of the profession and intensified collaborations between various stakeholders to better support newly qualified preschool teachers in Sweden and beyond.

Introduction

Public and political interest in the provision of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services has steadily grown (Geiss & Westberg, 2020). Simultaneously, research has illustrated a growing divide between education and care (Van Laere, Peeters, & Vandenbroeck, 2012), two inseparable concepts in a holistic view of education. Within the context of a schoolification of the early years in several countries (Van Laere, Peeters, & Vandenbroeck, 2012), where ECEC is increasingly seen as a preparation for compulsory schooling, the notion of care has become subordinate to the one of the education. In accordance with this, professional training of preschool teachers in Sweden, where this study was conducted, has been adapted multiple times, from traditionally caring “mothers of society to teachers qualified for post-graduate studies” (Tellgren, 2008, p. 1). Today’s preschool teachers in Sweden end their training with a university degree. Both dynamics, the schoolification of preschools in ECEC and the academization of preschool teacher education, have been met with skepticism in the Nordic countries (Broström, 2017; Gunnarsdottir, 2014) and have contributed to increasingly challenging conditions for ECEC workforce (Hansson & Erixon, 2020; Hildén, Löfdahl Hultman, & Ribaeus, 2023; Jonsson, Williams, & Pramling Samuelsson, 2017).

This article sheds light on one of the most vulnerable groups of personnel in ECEC, who can be seen as the link between preschool teacher education and preschools, namely newly qualified preschool teachers. Like their colleagues in compulsory schooling, they often struggle with discrepancies between their visionary ideals about their future profession and actual real-world work conditions (Lundberg et al., under review). The transition from pre-service preschool teachers to in-service preschool teachers can lead to feelings of stress and dissatisfaction and eventually high sickness absence and mental health issues (Persson & Tallberg Broman, 2019; Ståhle & Edman Stålbrandt, 2022). We might ask if newly qualified preschool teachers are well enough prepared for the challenges of contemporary ECEC.

To contribute to the field, the present study focuses on the views of the generally under-researched cohort of preschool principals. Identical to primary schools, every preschool in Sweden is led by single individual. This preschool principal has pedagogical, financial, and strategic responsibilities that support the decision of including them in this research. Furthermore, even though principals in Sweden might not be legally responsible for the employment of new preschool teachers, they organize the recruitment process. They then suggest suitable candidates to the political leadership in municipalities, based on their assessment of newly qualified preschool teachers’ competence in relation to the preschools’ specific requirements. In that sense, they have a de facto responsibility for hiring preschool teachers at their preschools. Additionally, preschool principals in Sweden are responsible for the creation of a welcoming environment and adequate conditions for new preschool teachers. Finally, principals are preschools’ pedagogical leaders, who manage preschool development in their own localities, and through their indirect influence onto preschool teacher education also in more general terms. As this is done in a context characterized by a balancing act between an increased schoolification in ECEC and a more traditional understanding of a care-focused preschool, understanding preschool principals’ views is of utmost importance.

In sum, the purpose of this study is to contribute to the discussion concerning adaptations and improvements of preschool teacher education that facilitate preschool teachers’ chances to live up to the requirements the profession places upon them. The study is guided by the following research questions:

RQ1:

In what way do preschool principals characterize newly qualified preschool teachers’ competence?

RQ2:

How do discourses about academization of preschool teacher education and schoolification of preschool become visible in principals’ characterizations of newly qualified preschool teachers and their description of today’s preschool teacher education?

Early childhood education and care in Sweden

This investigation focuses on the Swedish context, where ECEC has a long tradition and often serves as a prime example of an integrated ECEC system that combines childcare and education (Van Laere & Vandenbroeck, 2018). Today, preschool education is well established as an institution and governed by school law. In fact, approximately 95% of all 6-year-old children entering compulsory schooling in the so-called preschool class have already attended a preschool, where children aged between 1 and 5 years are given access to (SKR, 2022).

Swedish ECEC has been in constant transition for a significant amount of time. Infant schools (småbarnsskolor) and crèches (barnkrubbor) dominated in the 19^th century. At the turn of the century, the first kindergartens (barnträdgårdar) based on Fröbel’s philosophy were created and a prevalent social pedagogy approach focusing on child-centered and holistic development (Broström, 2017) was established following World War II, Swedish ECEC underwent centralization, shifting from private investors to government funding. As a consequence, municipalities were obliged to offer ECEC to all children by 1975, which represented a paradigmatic shift from the previous idea of particularly offering ECEC to children whose parents were in need. This shift, mainly driven by the pursuit of gender equality, has made ECEC an essential feature of the Swedish welfare system.

In line with the expansion of ECEC, the intention to provide a home-like environment gradually shifted to a more academic one, moving from a social pedagogical focus on care to an increased emphasis on learning. In a Swedish context, the notion of care (omsorg) has been extensively discussed (Löfdahl & Folke-Fichtelius, 2015) and can be understood as being responsible for someone’s safety, security, integrity, and well-being (Vallberg Roth & Holmberg, 2019).

Schoolification of preschools in ECEC

We define schoolification as the process of aligning a traditionally play-and-care-focused context (here ECEC) with pedagogical methods and guiding principles stemming from compulsory schooling. Intensified attention put on emergent literacy and numeracy, achieved through more overt and formal teaching and learning activities, assigns this context a more school-like character. Exemplified by Gunnarsdottir (2014), “schoolification in ECEC becomes evident when free play and learning through play are no longer considered appropriate routes to knowledge acquisition” (p. 246). Internationally, there is a growing concern that the schoolification of ECEC, challenges the conceptual integration of care and education (Löfdahl & Folke-Fichtelius, 2015). Van Laere, Peeters, and Vandenbroeck (2012) argue that “there seems to be a hierarchy between education and care” (p. 535), with the latter being the subordinate. In Sweden, schoolification tendencies are reinforced by preschool education being an integrated part of the wider educational system, guided by a national curriculum since 1998 (Skolverket, 2018).

In fact, one of the most prolific and most recent examples of policy changes in line with a schoolification process is the requirement to integrate teaching into preschool teachers’ mandate (SFS. 2010:800, 2010, p. 800). In the curriculum, teaching is described as “stimulating and challenging the children, taking the goals of the curriculum as a starting point and direction, and is aimed at encouraging development and learning among children” (Skolverket, 2018, p. 7). The curriculum continues by pointing out that children’s development and learning take place at all times, and teaching should therefore “be based on content that is planned or appears spontaneously” (p. 7). Important to note is that despite this clarification, teaching in preschool is understood in various, wider and more narrow, ways (Vallberg Roth, 2020).

The integration of explicit teaching into preschool teachers’ mandates has not been smooth. Previous research on teaching in Swedish preschool has mainly illustrated a lack of understanding and even resistance toward teaching the youngest children in the school system. Jonsson, Williams, and Pramling Samuelsson (2017), for instance, describe two discourses about teaching among preschool teachers: increasing or changing demands on teachers on the one hand and rights of children and parents on the other hand. According to their study, the integration of teaching in preschool education has led to higher demands regarding planning and documentation. They continue by pointing out positive side effects, which include increased quality and heightened status of preschool education. The discourse regarding rights is described as equally contradictory. While teaching in preschool has increased children’s right to be taught based on their own interests, preschool education seems to lose its playful character and focus on care.

More recent research, such as Hildén, Löfdahl Hultman, and Ribaeus (2023), report fading tensions among preschool teachers “concerning aspects that were contradictory to the professional tradition” (p. 11). Nevertheless, as shown by Williams and colleagues (2019), Swedish preschool teachers tend to struggle with the intensified focus on teaching in their mandate, particularly when combined with a lack of content knowledge and larger group sizes. With the current growth of society and the requirement to provide every child with a preschool place within a few months, today’s groups of children are generally greater than before (Pramling Samuelsson, Williams, Sheridan, & Hellman, 2016). Coupled with the increased loads of documentation, which preschool teachers have already described as time-consuming and demanding over 10 years ago (Emilson & Pramling Samuelsson, 2012), preschool teachers find themselves more than ever working overtime. This increased workload, however, has not been met with the necessary human resources. On the contrary and despite the increasing professionalization of the ECEC sector, the share of unqualified personnel has grown in recent times (Persson & Tallberg Broman, 2019).

Academization of preschool teacher education in Sweden

We regard the transformation of educational and practice-based training programs into the higher education sector as academization. In Sweden, educational reforms that introduced a comprehensive school system following World War II and the rise of the Swedish welfare state, had a great impact on the professional training of preschool teachers (Geiss & Westberg, 2020). Through one of multiple academization reforms, their education was transferred to the field of higher education in 1977, explaining why today’s preschool teachers, identical to teachers in compulsory schooling, end their training with a university degree.

Relatively recently, the Swedish Education Act of 2010 states that all higher education in Sweden must “rest on scientific grounds and proven experience” (SFS. 2010:800). As a result, substantially higher academic demands were placed on pre-service preschool teachers (Hansson & Erixon, 2020). As described by Erixon and Erixon Arreman (2017), extended writing demands during preschool teacher education has created an “imbalance in the time consumed for writing and the idea of work in early childhood, in terms of being physically around and communicating by way of talk and activities with the directly implicated receivers of early childhood services” (p. 351). According to our interpretation, Erixon and Erixon Arreman’s result might indicate that newly qualified preschool teachers’ knowledge of how to build and maintain relationships grounded in communicative skills may have stagnated, while their ability to ponder on theoretical concepts potentially improved. In more general terms, the described academization of preschool teacher training created a clearer distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge (Tellgren, 2008) and it remains to be seen if newly qualified preschool teachers are able to combine these two when working in preschools.

With the revision of the preschool curriculum, preschool teachers were given the mandate to teach content in fields such as language development, mathematics, and science and technology. Such content was previously not common in Swedish preschool teacher education (Williams, Sheridan, & Pramling Samuelsson, 2019). By adding those and in consideration of the education and care hierarchy described earlier, it is possible that other aspects of the preschool teachers’ professional mandate, for example those connected to relational competence, are given less attention. This would be disadvantageous, as preschool teachers experience challenges to build relationships not only with children but also with guardians, who have their own, and at times differing and more traditional, views regarding preschool education (Hedlin, 2019; Sheridan, 2009).

Materials and methods

A Q methodological approach (Brown, 1980; Stephenson, 1953) was chosen for this study. In the field of early childhood education, Q methodology has recently been applied to investigate practitioners’ perspectives on the Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) in the United Kingdom (Williams-Brown, 2021) and on educational leaders’ views on preschool disciplinary practices in the United States (Enright, 2019). In the same national context, Q sorting has also been selected to assess beliefs of preservice early childhood education educators (Di Santo, Timmons, & Lenis, 2017; La Paro, Siepak, & Scott-Little, 2009). Regarding the views of principals, Q has been applied to investigate effective professional development in American schools (Brown & Militello, 2016), and to study characterizations of newly qualified teachers in Southern Sweden (Lundberg et al., under review). The latter has served as a point of departure for the present study, which followed typical Q methodological stages (Lundberg, de Leeuw, & Aliani, 2020). First, the concourse of the study needs to be developed to permit the selection of a representative Q sample. Second, participants rank-order the Q sample onto a continuum and thereby produce their individual Q sort. Finally, data are analyzed through Q factor analysis and holistically interpreted.

Concourse development and Q sample construction

The concourse in this study originated in the Q sample for another study (Lundberg et al., under review) from the same research project. In that study, we investigated compulsory education principals’ views of newly qualified teachers in Sweden. Therefore, that Q sample was adapted to fit the pre-compulsory, early childhood setting in Sweden. In addition, the curriculum for Swedish pre-schools (Skolverket, 2018), and academic literature on preschool education, particularly from the Swedish context, were used as sources for additional statements to represent the entire mandate of local preschool teachers. To structure the concourse and eventually select a Q sample representative of the entire concourse, we identified eight dimensions of preschool teachers’ competence: pedagogical and didactical competences, development of the preschool, diversity management, documentation and evaluation, teacher identity, norms and values, relationship building and leadership with children, as well as relationship building with guardians and colleagues. All items start with the identical formulation that is: “My view of newly qualified preschool teachers is that they can …” . To obtain a Q sample “small enough for practical purposes and sufficiently diverse to approximate the diversity of the concourse” (Brown, 2019, p. 3), unclear and overlapping statements were deleted and double-barreled items were split. We invited colleagues to review our items, further refined them, and decided to go ahead with the 44 items presented in Table 3 in the results section.

Participant sampling and data collection

In Q methodological studies, there is no need for a large number of participants (Brown, 1980) as they, unlike the Q sample, do not need to be representative for a larger population. In fact, the average participant sample (called P-set) in Q studies in educational research is below 40 people (Lundberg, de Leeuw, & Aliani, 2020). As all participants should have a distinct viewpoint about the researched topic, they are purposively selected. For the present study, we aimed to cover both urban and rural settings in Southern Sweden. Through a simple internet search, we got hold of e-mail addresses and contacted preschools and district superintendents in a wide range of municipalities. We invited current principals and co-principals to participate in a face-to-face data collection conducted in their preschools and were generally met with considerable interest in our study. We had no relationships with the vast majority of these people and terminated our participant recruitment after 55 participants (named P1 to P55). Table 1 illustrates a summary of this study’s P-set.

Table 1. Demographic overview of participating principals (n = 55).

Gender	Male	4
	Female	50
	unclear	1
Age in years (average; range)	53; 29–65
Preschool teacher qualification	Yes	47
	No	8
Principal qualification	Yes	38
	Ongoing	7
	No or not indicated	8
Years of experience as a principal (average; range)	9,8; 1–22

We introduced the research project and methodological procedure, distributed a written consent form, and outlined that their participation was entirely voluntary and anonymized. As we did not collect any sensitive personal data, no ethics approval was necessary for this study. Data collection was then split into three steps: pre-sorting questionnaire focusing on demographic information, followed by the rank-ordering activity, and finally a post-sorting questionnaire, where all participants at least provided their rationale for the placements of the items at the extreme ends of the continuum and informed us about potentially missing items in the Q sample. As a final open-ended question, we instructed the participants to provide us with their view of contemporary preschool teacher education.

Concerning the Q sorting activity, we advised the participants to first divide all items into three provisional categories: (a) most characteristic for newly qualified preschool teachers, (b) least characteristic for newly qualified preschool teachers, (c) items they felt neutral/insecure about. We defined newly qualified preschool teachers as those practitioners who have recently concluded their preschool teacher education. What followed was the more complex rank-ordering of items onto the vertically oriented, forced-choice and symmetrical distribution grid (see Figure 1), which illustrates a continuum from most to least characteristic for newly qualified preschool teachers. We secured the data by taking a picture of all individual Q sorts, while they completed the written post-sorting questionnaire.

Figure 1. Distribution grid for 44 items.

Data analysis and interpretation

Ken-Q Analysis Desktop Edition (KADE, Banasick, 2019) was used to calculate correlations between individual sorts and perform Q factor analysis. Upon experimenting with several factor solutions, we decided to select one factor based on Centroid factor extraction and Varimax rotation. 50 out of 55 participants showed a significant loading (p > .01) on that one consensus factor F1, leaving only five non-significant sorts. Applying a less rigorous significance level (p > .05) allowed us to select a two-factor-solution. These factors, regarded as two manifestations of the consensus factor F1, are named F1a and F1b and have 29 and 14 significantly loading sorts, respectively. Nine sorts loaded significantly on both factors and are therefore marked as confounded in Table 2. The remaining three sorts are non-significant.

Table 2. Rotated factor loadings with flagged sorts marked in bold.

Q-sorts	Factor 1	Notes F1	Factor 1a	Factor 1b	Notes F1a/b
P41	0,8585		0,6906	0,5101	confounded
P9	0,7735		0,6032	0,4847	confounded
P29	0,7726		0,777	0,254
P10	0,7574		0,7464	0,2694
P7	0,7499		0,5612	0,5009	confounded
P26	0,7489		0,7655	0,2302
P6	0,7467		0,6457	0,3843
P44	0,7336		0,7367	0,2428
P5	0,7248		0,7813	0,1695
P39	0,7123		0,5978	0,3905	confounded
P42	0,7093		0,6769	0,2813
P17	0,7002		0,7895	0,118
P33	0,6948		0,571	0,397	confounded
P16	0,6923		0,7533	0,1526
P25	0,6879		0,7102	0,2021
P45	0,6846		0,4535	0,5349	confounded
P23	0,6562		0,3755	0,5908
P18	0,6521		0,6588	0,2106
P1	0,6479		0,7701	0,057
P30	0,6456		0,5819	0,3011
P47	0,6365		0,3035	0,6531
P13	0,6358		0,5577	0,3169
P4	0,6311		0,2796	0,6756
P40	0,6191		0,5284	0,3277
P38	0,615		0,4401	0,4373	confounded
P46	0,6142		0,3261	0,5863
P31	0,61		0,2886	0,6287
P43	0,608		0,4116	0,4635	confounded
P8	0,6077		0,5115	0,3313
P36	0,6054		0,4157	0,4536	confounded
P24	0,5996		0,5953	0,2075
P51	0,5912		0,5302	0,2793
P19	0,5887		0,4967	0,3194
P27	0,5873		0,797	−0,0787
P32	0,5812		0,6324	0,1281
P28	0,5791		0,5487	0,2349
P11	0,5584		0,4216	0,3681
P20	0,5451		0,5931	0,1202
P34	0,5451		0,4747	0,2762
P49	0,5437		0,2341	0,591
P2	0,5297		0,3327	0,4377
P55	0,5207		0,4386	0,2834
P48	0,4734		0,2081	0,5088
P14	0,4641		0,4395	0,1887
P22	0,4607		0,0624	0,6799
P53	0,4359		0,5497	−0,0032
P3	0,4219		0,1207	0,5389
P54	0,4117		−0,0116	0,6964
P35	0,4086		0,0913	0,5555
P37	0,3832		0,4648	0,0213
P52	0,3294	non-significant	0,0292	0,5065
P15	0,3209	non-significant	0,1698	0,3071	non-significant
P50	0,2658	non-significant	0,098	0,3106	non-significant
P12	0,2329	non-significant	0,085	0,2732	non-significant
P21	0,0872	non-significant	−0,24	0,4605

Factor interpretation was done collectively as a research team. We started by investigating the entire configuration of items in the array of F1 and produced a preliminary narrative of this consensus factor. For the two-factor solution, we first interpreted the individual factors, then compared F1a and F1b and finally compared those two factors to F1. All three-factor narratives are to be found in the next section of this article.

The final post-sorting question regarding this study’s participants’ view of contemporary preschool teacher education was thematically analyzed. We initiated the analytical process by individually reading all received responses (53 out of 55, 96.4% response rate) and thereby familiarizing ourselves with the data. Collaborative and inductive coding then allowed the emergence of empirically and conceptually grounded themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Results

In this section, we first present our Q methodological results. These consist of a narrative of consensus Factor 1 and a presentation of similarities and differences between F1a and F1b. Finally, we present the emerged themes in participants’ responses regarding contemporary preschool teacher education.

Preschool principals’ views of newly qualified preschool teachers

Table 3 presents the raw results of both selected factor solutions. To visually enhance data interpretation, item values were colored with different shades of green (darkest green; most characteristic; +5) and red (darkest red; least characteristic; −5). Information regarding consensus concerns only the two-factor solution and therefore indicates items that are significantly similarly ranked by F1a and F1b. The dimensions in Table 3 are listed from most characteristic to least characteristic as ranked by the consensus factor F1. In other words, on average, preschool principals in our study ranked items in the dimension “Pedagogical and didactical competences” as most characteristic for newly qualified preschool teachers. At the other end of the spectrum, items within the dimension “Relationship building with guardians and colleagues” were, on average, given the lowest ranking.

Table 3. Factor values for items per factor.

What follows is a narrative description for Factor 1. The numbers in parentheses represent the item number (#), followed by the score allocated by the merged average of all participants significantly loading on this factor. Cited participant comments stemming from the written post-sorting responses are supposed to further enrich the factor interpretation and provide a deeper and more robust account (Brown & Militello, 2016). As all conversations involving participants were held in Swedish, participants’ quotations are to be understood as fluid descriptions of meaning (Van Nes, Abma, Jonsson, & Deeg, 2010), rather than as word-by-word translations.

F1: the overwhelming consensus

Fifty out of 55 participating preschool principals significantly loaded on Factor 1. Hence, this study’s result suggests that preschool principals in Sweden generally agree on what is characteristic of newly qualified preschool teachers. Competences such as planning teaching (#11; +5) and promoting every child’s development, both concerning language and communication (#8; +5), and mathematics, science, and technology (#1; +4) are regarded as highly characteristic of the newest generation of preschool teachers. In combination with the high rankings given to items regarding the use of research (#22; +4) and preschool teachers’ competence to understand children’s learning in relation to science and proven experience (#7; +3), the results show a view of academically trained preschool teachers. In addition, they seem to be able to take responsibility to conduct any activities in their preschool in accordance with the curriculum’s intentions, norms, and values (#24; +4). According to the curriculum (Skolverket, 2018), teaching in preschool should not only be based on planned content but also on spontaneously appearing one, usually during play. Our results indicate that being able to capture learning situation based on play (#34; +2) and to follow-up teaching and adapt planning (#26; +2) are somewhat less characteristic than items described above.

This consensus factor paints a clear picture of what is less characteristic of newly qualified preschool teachers. Dealing with guardians in difficult conversations (#14; −5) or preparing them and their children for transitions (#42; −5) seem to be challenging tasks. P51 explains: “They do not have insight, understanding or methods for difficult conversations and simply forget to prepare parents and children for transitions” (written response). Even giving guardians the opportunity to participate in the evaluation of the children’s development (#30; −3) was ranked toward the less characteristic end of the continuum. In the written post-sorting responses, P46 mentions that they, as principals, often receive feedback that practicing conversations with guardians is missing in preschool teacher education.

Staying within the dimension of relationship building with other adults, item #6, concerning cooperation with teachers in pre-school class, school, and the leisure center (−4) was ranked low, which might be explained by the fact that newly qualified preschool teachers only seldomly need “to take responsibility for this” (P4, written response). In addition, also item #35 regarding newly qualified preschool teachers’ competence to deal with criticism from more experienced colleagues was ranked at −4. According to P34, “it is particularly difficult to deal with criticism when they have newer knowledge than the more experienced colleagues” (written response). In general, the ability to deal with pushbacks at work (#33; −4) seems to be uncharacteristic for newly qualified preschool teachers. For participant 41, this is due to “an image of the profession, which does not include a daily work with stress and the fact that we might have to think differently about planning” (written response).

Similarities between F1a and F1b

In Table 3, several items were marked as consensus items. By implication, the ranking of those items for F1a and F1b is very similar as in F1. Interestingly, those consensus items are found spread out across the distribution grid. F1a and F1b agree on newly qualified preschool teachers’ ability to plan teaching (#11) and take responsibility for the activities being conducted in accordance with the curriculum’s intentions, norms, and values (#24). They also agree that both, dealing with guardians in difficult conversations (#14) and preparing children and guardians for transitions (#42), are tasks that are not characteristic of newly qualified preschool teachers. Clearly in the bottom half of the distribution grid is also item #2, concerning active measures to prevent abusive treatment. According P39 this is “not necessarily something newly qualified preschool teachers practice during placements” (written response).

Around the center of the distribution, an area often wrongfully overlooked due to a lack characteristicness or significance (Brown, 1980), we detect items #29 (ensure that the children’s perceptions and opinions are taken into account in the children’s group), #38 (take an active and confident role among team colleagues) and #9 (make use of the opportunity for learning in the preschool’s outdoor environment). In line with the interpretation of consensus items ranked around the distribution’s center by Lundberg, Fraschini, and Aliani (2023), we believe they still illustrate underlying characteristics of newly qualified teachers, informing both F1a and F1b. In other words, items #29, #38, and #9 represent competences of newly qualified preschool teachers that are regarded as self-evident, but not distinctive when comparing F1a with F1b.

Differences between F1a and F1b

Despite loading on the same overwhelming consensus factor, some clear differences between F1a and F1b can be described. Some of the most evident differences can be found in F1a’s high ranking of items concerning newly qualified preschool teachers’ academic competencies, illustrated with items #7 (understand children’s learning in relation to science and proven experience) and #22 (make use of current research). Respondents loading on F1b provide some explanation of their lower ranking of these items. P54, for example, believes that understanding children’s learning in relation to science and proven experience ‘is often way too abstract this early in their career” (written response) and P21 criticizes that “theories are used too little to understand children’s development and learning (written response). Finally, P49 states they ‘tend to have to remind the newly qualified teachers that using research was not only important during their studies, but also now’ (written response). Continuing with other highly ranked competencies within the dimension of ‘Documentation and Evaluation,’ such as continuously and systematically documenting and analyzing each child’s development (#3), and the dimension of ‘Development of the preschool’ where item #5 describes preschool teachers” ability to identify opportunities to develop the preschool’s quality, the first sub-factor seems to have a more academic image of newly qualified preschool teachers in Sweden.

Factor 1b then, has considerably higher rankings for any items that focus on relationship building skills. Both, with children and adults, respondents on F1b regard newly qualified preschool teachers to be more competent than those loading significantly on F1a. The difference is most considerable concerning collaboration with colleagues (#39) and the establishment of a functioning everyday communication with guardians (#43), which P52 supports by stating “they take contact with the guardians and make sure it all works out” (written response).

With regard to children, F1b ranks item 12 (promote children’s interaction and respect for each other) fairly higher than F1a. Considering that all items within the dimension of relationship building with children and various other items touching upon the concept of care (see items #21; #37 and #27) are ranked higher by the second sub-factor allows us to draw the conclusion that F1b has a stronger focus on practical and care-related aspects of the Swedish preschool system than F1a. This interpretation is supported by participants’ written responses, such as “My impression is that newly qualified preschool teachers have the competence to ensure that every child receives good care” (P46) and “care and values tend to be basic for those that study to become preschool teachers” (P35).

Regarding demographics, we can report some minor differences. On average, the 29 preschool principals loading significantly on Factor 1a are some years younger (50 versus 56 years) and have less principal experience (9,4 versus 12,4 years). We can assume that their education toward both preschool teacher and preschool principal was completed more recently than those of F1b respondents.

Preschool principals’ views of today’s preschool teacher education

Post-sorting questions consisted of a question about participants’ views of today’s preschool teacher education. As shown in Table 4, the following main themes emerged from the inductive analysis of participants’ written responses:

Table 4. Emerged themes concerning today’s preschool teacher education.

Theme	Number of responses
Relationship between theory and practice	39	11 positive responses 18 negative responses 10 ambivalent responses
Requesting more collaboration	15
Requesting increased special needs education competence	6
Differences between universities	5

The most prominent theme is that of the relationship between theory and practice in preschool education, which has been addressed by 39 participants. The majority of these answers are about the fact that preschool teacher education emphasizes theoretical knowledge too much, at the expense of more practical knowledge. It is particularly common for principals to describe preschool teacher training in contrast to “reality” as a reference to preschool activities. The following quotes illustrate this picture, which appears to be critical of the academization of preschool teacher education.

Theoretical and does not always connect to reality. New preschool teachers are not being fully prepared for what the profession actually requires.

(F36, written response)

It is far too theoretical; reality usually does not match with what the courses contain.

(P35, written response)

That it is a little too theory based. Too little practice. For many new preschool teachers, it comes as a shock to face the reality of work.

(P26, written response)

Although there exists a predominantly negative view of the theoretical content of the education, several principals have also highlighted the value of increased academicization and research links. In the following quotes, a more positive picture of preschool teacher education and its theoretical content emerges.

I feel that it is much more academic and theoretical now than before. Which I think is good because it gives the profession a higher status.

(P54, written response)

I am impressed that preschool teachers are familiar with research. It has gotten better over time.

(P33, written response)

The second theme that appears in the post-sorting responses concerns various forms of collaboration. Here, too, several principals contrast the preschool teacher education with “reality,” and many call for closer cooperation so that the content of the teacher education better corresponds to the demands made in preschools. The following survey responses exemplify the principals’ desire for increased collaboration.

We need more exchange of experience – Contact with student health teams – BUP (child and adolescent psychiatry) – social services – police – principals & staff who lecture in the education?

(P12, written response)

In order to get a holistic picture and to translate theory into practice, placements are needed in all semesters. This becomes apparent when it is time for assessment.

(P2, written response)

That preschool teachers need to teach and lead a larger group of children. They often train on a smaller group of children.

(P24, written response)

The type of collaboration that above all P12 is calling for seems to be about more comprehensive and strategic issues as well as a closer collaboration between different social actors and stakeholders to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the profession during their education. P13 touches upon the same topic in their response to missing items in the Q sample, stating a lack of “organizational competences, a need to look up and see the entire picture and not only the individual parts of it” (P13, written response). This is supported by P27, who mentions how “many are shocked when they realize that care, development, and learning must form a whole” (P27, written response). According to our interpretation, the responses from P2 and P24 aim more concretely at collaboration between preschools and preschool teacher education through placements. Leading larger groups of children was also mentioned as a missing item in the Q sample, illustrating the importance of the issue, potentially missed in the construction of our data collection instrument.

Finally, there are survey responses that can be linked to special needs education competence. Here, the picture is somewhat divided, with several principals who believe that the education should include more special pedagogy in order to be able to meet children with special needs. Others believe that special pedagogy has been given more space in education for some time, which is seen positively. Regarding the final theme, five principals simply mention that there are differences in quality between the various universities providing preschool teacher education without further elaborating on these perceived differences.

Discussion and practical implications

In this final section, we first discuss the study’s responses to our research questions, concerning preschool principals’ views of newly qualified preschool teachers in Sweden and a visualization of the discourses about academization of preschool teacher education and schoolification of preschool.

First and foremost, it is noticeable to see an overwhelming consensus among participating preschool principals. This is particularly interesting in comparison with our study among principals in compulsory schooling, where we were able to describe four distinct views about newly qualified teachers (Lundberg et al., under review). Explanations for the detected consensus in the present study might lie in the similarity of the teacher education at various universities in Sweden and the resulting common disciplinary socialization. Compared to compulsory schools, a greater need to collaboratively fight for common legitimization of a fairly new form of education (Tellgren, 2008) might be an additional reason for the consensus illustrated in F1. Naturally, preschool principals that decided not to participate in this study might hold views that are not detected and presented in this paper. However, because Q methodology follows a qualitative logic with regard to the generalizability of its findings, F1 should be understood to be valid even beyond the study’s P-set based on substantive, as opposed to statistical inference (Thomas & Baas, 1993).

Secondly, all described factors characterize newly qualified preschool teachers as competent in planning teaching and taking responsibility for the activities being conducted in accordance with the curriculum’s intentions, norms, and values. As planning and leading activities were also prevalent in traditional play- and care-focused social pedagogy approach (Broström, 2017), this result alone does not support the schoolification argument. However, combined with high ranking for items regarding children’s subject development, our study can be regarded as a confirmation of the schoolification process of preschool education (Van Laere, Peeters, & Vandenbroeck, 2012). Nevertheless, with regard to teaching, we must know the concept may be characterized differently by our respondents. As illustrated by Vallberg Roth (2020), there exist at least eight distinguishing traces of what may characterize teaching in Swedish preschool. As a limitation of our Q methodological study with pre-established items to be sorted, we did not offer participants a straightforward opportunity to repudiate teaching in preschool, which was identified as a trace in Vallberg Roth’s study. However, participants potentially repudiating teaching, might have sorted items concerning teaching in the center of the distribution (see Figure 1).

Studying our two-factor-solution, we can detect a factor F1a, which foregrounds more academic competences in newly qualified preschool teachers. To mention but a few examples, making use of current research, understanding children’s learning in relation to science and proven experience, and identifying opportunities to develop the preschool’s quality are all indicative of a highly academicized preschool teacher education (Hansson & Erixon, 2020). Even though F1b ranks more practical items and those connected to the concept of care higher than F1a, the consensus factor F1 confirms the hierarchy between superordinate education and subordinate care among contemporary preschool teachers (Van Laere, Peeters, & Vandenbroeck, 2012). To what extent newly qualified teachers are able to conceptually integrate aspects of education and care (Löfdahl & Folke-Fichtelius, 2015), cannot be shown conclusively by this study. The item concerning preschool teachers’ competence to ensure that care, development, and learning from a whole, was ranked in the center of the distribution. However, written responses collected post-sorting indicate that preschool teacher education lacks a focus on a more comprehensive understanding of the profession, leaving newly qualified preschool teachers in shock when entering their initial career phase. This then can lead to feelings of stress and dissatisfaction and eventually high sickness absence and mental health issues (Persson & Tallberg Broman, 2019; Ståhle & Edman Stålbrandt, 2022).

Several study participants raise the potential of collaborations to counteract increasingly challenging conditions for ECEC workforce. Noteworthy here is the range of suggested collaborations. A better integration of different social actors and stakeholders into preschool teacher education might achieve at least two goals. First, we expect such an integration to facilitate newly qualified preschool teachers’ task to see their entire mandate, instead of simply focusing on teaching and care for children. Second, newly qualified teachers would be made aware of various support measures early on, potentially diminishing their feeling of being overwhelmed and the beginning of their career. Even an intensified collaboration between preschools and preschool teacher education might be helpful in illustrating the entire spectrum of their future profession. Placements, for instance, should less focus on taking care of smaller groups of children, and instead represent safe spaces where pre-service preschool teachers are allowed and encouraged to experience aspects that are otherwise difficult to practice. In fact, participants in this study have clearly stated that contemporary preschool education is too theoretical and lacks the connection to what many call the “reality”. Part of that reality are also aspects associated with relationship building with guardians and colleagues, the dimension of our Q sample that was ranked lowest by F1. In particular, dealing with guardians in difficult conversations and preparing children and their guardians for transitions does not seem to be sufficiently practiced during preschool teacher education. If or to what extent the academization of preschool teacher education has hindered newly qualified preschool teachers’ skills to deal with guardians cannot be determined. Nevertheless, being aware of increasing demands of guardians and parental participation (Hedlin, 2019), we suggest preschool teacher education try to better integrate those aspects in their programs, both during placements and on campus.

Finally, returning to the struggles connected to academization of preschool teacher education and the schoolification of preschool internationally as well as in the Swedish context (Gunnarsdottir, 2014; Hildén, Löfdahl Hultman, & Ribaeus, 2023), we suggest using the Q sample and the idea of Q sorting as a mediational tool (Lundberg, de Leeuw, & Aliani, 2020). This might be done during the collegial discussions described in Hildén, Löfdahl Hultman, and Ribaeus (2023) or even during mentoring sessions for team support, which even include children’s guardians (Ståhle & Edman Stålbrandt, 2022). These activities might uncover conceptual similarities and differences among collaborating preschool personnel and other stakeholders and help clarify tensions between more traditional views of preschool teachers’ mandate and those more in line with contemporary policy. Future research might mentor preschool personnel, including newly qualified and more experienced preschool teachers, in navigating a preschool in constant change.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the preschool principals that participated in this study and the reviewers that provided constructive feedback on the previous versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).