Browsing by Subject "fostrare"

The purpose with this study is to find out the educators’ experiences about conflicts between children at different ages at daycare and to get an insight in how the educators deal with the conflict situations and how they see their own role in these situations. The theory part includes a discussion of daycare as a place of interaction between children and educators, and also between children. It also includes a discussion of conflicts between children, and the educators’ role in the conflict situations. The study is qualitative and was carried out through interviews with three educators working at daycare. A long experience of conflicts between children at daycare and experience of working with children at all ages under school age were the criteria for the interview persons. The interviews were tape recorded, and then transcribed and analyzed. The result indicates that conflicts between children at daycare are diverse and that conflicts are common at all ages. There are many reasons that conflicts between children emerge and the reasons are partly agerelated. Besides that, younger children also act more physically in conflict situations, while older children are more verbal and they also can leave some children outside the group as a consequence of a conflict. The educators feel that their role in conflict situations is important. Their role in handling the conflicts is complex and the educators have to act in different ways in different situations. The educators have to be present when the children interact and they also all the time have to make interpretations of the interaction between the children in order to notice when conflicts between children emerges, what happens in the conflict situations and when to intervene. The educators are clearly aware of the importance of children learning how to solve conflicts themselves.