Managing the Tension Between the Known and the Unknown in Knowledge-Building: The Example of the Play-Responsive Early Childhood Education and Care (PRECEC) Project

Abstract

This project was aimed at taking on the challenge of developing a didaktik for preschool, through empirical and theoretical work. The design was built on teachers’ own video observations of play activities in preschool, where they themselves were participants. Teachers, their principals, and researchers met regularly at the university to collaboratively discuss the video recordings. On these occasions the researchers also provided further education on theoretical concepts useful for analysing play activities in preschool, such as metacommunication and intersubjectivity. The outcome was the theorisation of Play-Responsive Early Childhood Education and Care (PRECEC), consisting of a coherent conceptualisation of teaching, as a responsive activity, and play, as something participants signal to each other through shifts between communicating and acting as is and as if. A challenge we discuss in this chapter is how to deal with the ‘unknown’ in a practice-based research project, i.e. not only reproducing knowledge (further education) but also, critically and at the same time, developing new knowledge (research).