Using learning study to understand preschoolers’ learning: challenges and possibilities

This article reports a meta-analysis based on a multiple case study of the use of learning study (LS) to understand children’s learning in Swedish preschool. The aim is to investigate whether and how the LS model can be developed, adjusted and used to meet contemporary demands placed upon preschool teachers for increased content focus and improved cognitive outcomes. The research questions are (1) How can the LS model be adapted to understand preschool children’s learning? and (2) What challenges and possibilities arise in such process? The material consists of video documentation of eight meetings, 10 interventions and 237 individual, hands-on interviews with preschoolers collected within five LS projects in Sweden including seven researchers, 10 teachers/student teachers and 86 children. Four features (approach to learning, way of guiding the children, content focus and assessment of children’s learning) found to be possibly challenging in the tension between the school based LS model and the preschool context are used to demonstrate changes made to the LS that allowed it to be adapted to preschool settings. We conclude that the LS model may be applied and adjusted to preschool settings to deepen the teachers’ understanding of children’s learning, but the tradition of seeing learning in preschool as doing, having fun or playing should be challenged and revised in a new way unique to this setting. An educational practice combining play with learning in a more purposeful way has to be developed along with better methods to assess children’s learning.