The gap between juridical and pedagogical discourses concerning preventing and countering abusive treatment in preschool policy documents

ABSTRACT

The basic idea of a Swedish preschool is that it is a place where children can learn and experience growth in a variety of areas, not least in the social area. According to the Education Act all preschools must annually document and evaluate planned work to prevent and remedy abusive treatment. The aim of this article is to analyse if and how the discursive gap between the juridical and pedagogical assignments given to preschools in national policy documents becomes visible in local policy plans concerning the prevention and remedy of abusive treatment. The empirical material consists of 89 documents. The result makes it clear that the juridical and pedagogical discourses contain a gap in local policy plans, making it unclear whether a juridical perspective or a pedagogical perspective on abusive treatment is to be used when preventing and remedying abusive treatment in practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Children
• juridical discourse
• pedagogical discourse
• early childhood education
• abusive treatment
• conflict

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://www.skolverket.se/regler-och-ansvar/ansvar-i-skolfragor/krankande-behandling-mobbning-och-diskriminering

2 These documents contain both plans for how the work to prevent and remedy abusive treatment should be performed as well as an evaluation of how previous years’ work has gone. These documents will from now on be called plans.