I förskolans verksamhet förenas pedagogik med omsorg, vilket framträder i de mest vardagliga aktiviteter såsom morgonsamling, måltider och påklädning. I dessa aktiviteter samspelar pedagoger och barn - ofta små barn vars språkliga och kommunikativa färdigheter är under utveckling. Mycket av forskningen om små barn handlar just om deras utveckling, närmare bestämt fokuserar på vad barn inte kan. Genom att studera förskolans rutinaktiviteter med hjälp av multimodal interaktionsanalys, kan vi i stället lära oss om vad barn faktiskt gör med de färdigheter de besitter när de samspelar med pedagoger såväl som med andra barn.

The overarching aim of the present study is to elucidate how preschool teachers and children in their interaction accomplish institutional everyday activities in preschool. What is analyzed, more specifically, is how the preschool teachers and children use certain interactional phenomena as resources when they organize their social interaction. The study is a video-based study and ethnomethodological and conversation analytic perspectives are taken as theoretical and analytical points of departure. This means that parts of the video recorded material has been transcribed in detail and micro analyzed.

The results of the study are presented in two empirical chapters where it is shown, in detail, how preschool teachers and children in their interaction accomplish everyday activities in preschool. In particular, it is illuminated how the interactional phenomenon question-answer-sequences can function as an important interactional and educational resource for the participants, when they organize their interaction. Further, the detailed analyses show that since the interaction is being organized through question-answer-sequences, it becomes possible for the teacher to capture and direct the children’s attention towards different mathematical, physical and linguistic contents, in line with the intentions of the curriculum, as well as create a shared experience of these curricula contents in practice.

Altogether, the analyses of the study thus show how the educational practice of preschool is being accomplished locally – by preschool teachers and children in interaction.