Umeå University's logo

The aim is to deepen the understanding of how nurturing is performed in preschools with a specific focus on teachers' verbal utterances in preschool practice. Swedish preschool teachers are tasked by the National Agency for Education (2016) to ''provide children with good pedagogical activities, where care, nurturing and learning together form a coherent whole'' (p. 4) which is commonly referred to as Educare. However, in my research, preschool teachers do not talk about their practice as nurturing, instead parents are said to be responsible for nurturing the children. At the same time, when preschool teachers' everyday practice is observed, they do practice what appear as a nurturing of the children (Dolk, 2013; Emilsson, 2008). How can their practice, that seem to function as nurturing but, still, is not acknowledged as such, be understood? The research's overall theoretical perspective is based on Foucault's theories of power (Foucault, 2003). Important concepts are discipline and normalisation, which is conceptualises as guidance. To explore this matter, 37.5 h video observations were thematically analysed with a critical approach. This study was approved by Swedish Ethics Committee for Research. All participants have given verbal (children) or written (children's parents and preschool teachers) consent. All participants are anonymised. The result reveal two ways of guiding children, direct guidance and indirect guidance. The result also shows that power, discipline and normalisation are common elements in everyday preschools practice. This research has implication for preschool practice and contribute for a better understanding regarding reproduction of norms in preschools practice.