Exploring preschool teachers’ professional profiles in Swedish preschool: a latent class analysis

ABSTRACT

This article explores preschool teachers’ professional profiles in Sweden. Considering various educational policy reforms in Sweden the last decades, this study is grounded in interactionist perspectives and Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model. A set of multiple professional indicators related to preschool teachers’ educational background, personal characteristics and their working context were analysed applying latent class analysis as a person-oriented approach. The sample consists of 698 preschool teachers across different preschools in 46 municipalities in Sweden. The analysis revealed two subgroups of preschool teachers’ professional profiles: (a) late educated (after the introduction of preschool curriculum in 1998) and (b) early educated (before the introduction of preschool curriculum in 1998). The pattern of graduation year, experience, continuous professional development and specified assignment in preschool was the most distinctive pattern across these profiles. Findings add to the ongoing debate on preschool teachers’ professionalization suggesting an alternative analytic approach examining multiple indicators characterizing preschool teachers’ professional profiles.

KEYWORDS:

• Preschool teachers
• professional profiles
• latent class analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Panagiota Nasiopoulou is a PhD student in Child and Youth Studies at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research interest concerns preschool teacher’s professionalization process as a result of interconnected reforms that have taken place in Swedish preschool context in recent decades. In her forthcoming dissertation, which is part of the project “The impact of group size on children’s affordances in preschool”, she studies the preschool teachers’ professional profiles and their relation to the preschool teachers’ working methods regarding the group size in preschool.

Dr. Pia Williams is a Professor in Child and Youth studies at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research interest is oriented towards Early Childhood Education with special focus on conditions for children’s, learning, development and wellbeing in different educational contexts, such as preschool and school. Current research involves studies of the impact of group size on children’s learning and development in preschool. She has been a consultant for the Ministry of Education and the National Agency for Education at several times, concerning questions about children and education. She has authored a wide range of books and articles focusing on Early Childhood Education.

Dr. Sonja Sheridan is a Professor in Education at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She specializes in research on quality issues related to the preschool quality, preschool profession and conditions for children’s wellbeing, learning and development in preschool. She has been the leader and member of several research projects, with many international publications. She has worked for the Swedish Ministry of Education in many different roles, one of these to participate in the revision of the Swedish curricula for preschool, another to participate in an OECD network, Monitoring Child Outcomes in ECEC, 2013.

Dr. Kajsa Yang Hansen is an associate professor at the Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research concerns educational equity and quality from a comparative perspective. Currently she is investigating if students’ opportunities to learn can be associated with educational reforms in Sweden (i.e., the CHOICE project, http://ips.gu.se/english/research/research_projects/choice), which will contribute to a better understanding of long-term trends in Swedish pupils’ educational outcomes. Dr. Yang Hansen also has an interest in analytical techniques for large-scale survey data, such as multi-level analysis, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and mixture models within second generation SEM framework.

ORCID

Panagiota Nasiopoulou http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1074-4970

Pia Williams http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3682-2781

Kajsa Yang Hansen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7071-2482

Additional information

Funding

This study is a part of the project entitled ‘The impact of group size on children’s affordance in preschool’ supported by Swedish Research Council [721-2011-5535].