TY - JOUR AU - Gustafsson Nyckel, Jan AU - Lander, Rolf AU - Thång, Per-Olof PY - 2020/12/17 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Fragmented boundary zones between theory and practice in preschool teacher education in Sweden JF - Journal of Praxis in Higher Education JA - JPHE VL - 2 IS - 2 SE - Research Articles (peer-reviewed) DO - 10.47989/kpdc86 UR - https://journals.hb.se/jphe/article/view/86 SP - pp. 82-105 AB - <p>Research dealing with preschool teacher education has been, for a long time, critical<br />of a binary divide between theory and practice. Based on that issue, this study<br />investigates a preschool teacher education programme in Sweden. It focusses on<br />reflection upon theory and practice as an affordance offered to students in studies and<br />work. The study used a questionnaire with two groups: campus students<br />following the regular programme and students who were nurses already working at<br />preschools. Analysis shows a fragmented education where the groups faced different<br />problems, but also that neither of them could connect reflections on theory and<br />practice at the workplace to their own learning approaches in either studies or<br />working matters. How the students experienced affordances depended on their<br />educational skills and knowledge, and the programme relied mostly on individual<br />reflection as the solution to the binary divide. This reliance seemed to work better for<br />campus students, who were challenged by the new environmental affordances. The<br />students in the field-based programme were close to the preschools’ pedagogical<br />micro-practice, which limited the possibility for critical reflection on theory and<br />practice and its contextual conditions, especially for students who were nurses.<br />Workplace routines seem to structure the students’ learning instead.</p> ER -