Wintry conditions, including ice and snow, last for six months of the year in northern Scandinavia, and thus strongly influence many preschool outdoor educational practices, but there has been little research on their impact and implications. To address this gap, we have explored preschool teachers’ experiences of everyday outdoor practices during the winter in the region. Through an analysis rooted in post-human and new materialist perspectives, we have identified human agents as well as non-human agents and their complex intra-actions between variations in ice and snow (e.g. ice-crust and sticky snow). In addition to illustrating how non-human, temporal agents may directly affect outdoor preschool practices, our study shows that diverse intra-actions in human-nature encounters play important roles in the becoming of ice, snow and associated (un)sustainable values. The results indicate a need for further critical examination of how preschool children’s outdoor encounters are framed by seasonal and climatic changes.

HUS, hållbar utevistelse vid storförskolor är ett nationellt forskningsprojekt i samverkan med Umeå kommuns förskoleverksamhetunder åren 2021–2025. Projektet är tvärvetenskapligt, vilket innebär att vi som medverkar kommer från olika områden såsom utbildningsvetenskap,pedagogiskt arbete, miljöpsykologi, samhällsmedicin, idrottsvetenskap och landskapsarkitektur och att vi här arbetar gemensamt med flera olika perspektiv och kunskaper.

Många förskolor i Sverige byggdes under 70-talet vilket betyder att de snart är 50 år, och är därför i behov av renovering eller heltersättas av nya. Samtidigt har vi i dag en ökad befolkning i städerna och behovet av nya platser på förskolorna har ökat. Att ge alla barnen plats på förskolan, och att bygga förskolor med rymliga och funktionella förskolegårdar i städer där grönytor har minskat som följd av förtätning kan därför vara utmanande. I vårt forskningsprojekt vill vi undersöka vad den förändring som svensk förskola genomgår med sina förändrade byggnader, utegårdar och begränsad tillgång till natur innebär för barnen som vistas där dagligen. Vi vill lyfta både det positiva och det som kan vara problematiskt och behöver utvecklas.

Vårt samarbetsprojekt är finansierat av FORMAS, en statlig förvaltare som stödjer forskningsprojekt i samverkan med aktörer i praktiken och som vill bidra till en hållbar samhällsutveckling. Det är också vårt mål med HUS projektet - att den kunskap vi kan skapa gemensamt med förskolorna i Umeå kan bidra till att skapa utemiljöer, och förhållningssätt till dessa, som stimulerar barns rörelse och hälsa, relationsskapande med varandra och naturen för en hållbar utveckling.

En del av vårt projekt har handlat om att dokumentera de medverkande förskolornas utemiljöer och den verksamhet som bedrivs där, utifrån pedagogernas perspektiv. Vi har också låtit barnen själva berätta om, och visa vilka platser på sina gårdar som de helst leker vid. I denna projektdokumentation finns därför alla de medverkande förskolorna beskrivna med sina berättelser tillsammans med våra olika forskningsresultat från de olika delstudierna och övergripande slutsatser. Förhoppningsvis kan våra exempel och lärdomar också fungera som inspiration för andra kommuner och förskolor som vill arbeta med,och utveckla sina utemiljöer på ett hållbart sätt. Den här projektboken har under de första åren fungerat som ett levande dokument och som en tidig återkoppling till våra deltagare. Nu när projektet avslutas i december år 2025 har vi adderat resultat och slutsatser från våra delstudier samt summerat våra erfarenheter av detta mångåriga projekt.

Som projektledare vill jag uttrycka min tacksamhet och glädje över förmånen att få ha arbetat tillsammans med dels forskarkollegor från många olika fält och olika delar av landet och dels er inom Umeå kommuns förskoleverksamhet samt Teknik och fastighetsförvaltningen. Det har varit värdefullt och inspirerande att vi under flera år har fått samlas och uppmärksamma aktuella och relevanta frågor för förskolans uteverksamhet som ett bidragtill en mer hållbar samhällsutveckling.

Tack till er alla!

Annika Manni, projektledare Umeå universitet

This qualitative article explores a Swedish teachers’ rebellion group (TRG) on Facebook with the aim of exploring teachers’ stories about violence in school. Facebook groups for teachers, such as the TRG, are common sites where teachers discuss and share professional matters and both public stories and subjective experiences. In this article, we focus on narratives about children who are perceived by the teachers as dangerous in various ways. The concept of the formula story, together with child and teacher agency, helps us to explore the symbolic and emotional aspects at stake when the teachers discuss the dangerous child in the TRG. In the analysis, an ambivalent image of the dangerous child emerges where child and teacher agency intersect with each other and with other human and non-human actors. This image challenges contemporary ideas and ideals about children and childhood as well as the teaching profession. The conclusion broadens our notions of the child and reflects upon the outcomes of applying agency to the context of school violence.

This collaborative article explores child-centredness as a theoretical and methodological concept by asking what it means to centre children in research. The collaborative format offers a heterogeneity of voices on the concept as the contributing authors write, critically and creatively, from a range of different interdisciplinary research perspectives. Writing from the departure point of the key role of child-centred approaches within the field, including recent discussions concerning the need to decentre children/childhood, the goal is to spur and contribute to discussions on the possibilities and challenges of the concept, as well as new ways of approaching it.

This article investigates views and discourses on outdoor play in preschool teachers talks about their playgrounds and outdoor practices in Swedish preschools. Included were a strategic sample of teachers from newer, larger preschool facilities with more programmed outdoor space, and teachers from older, more traditional facilities containing more nature. Through interviews with 38 teachers at 21 preschools and a thematic analysis inspired by socio-material theory, we identified three main themes: The meanings and limits of free outdoor play, the view on nature and children’s encounters with nature,and dangers and risks in the playground. Within these themes, we show how the teachers’ views construct discourses related to the outdoor educational places and spaces that are available. Furthermore, changes in preschool curricula as well as in the playground material and design are active agents in constructing discourses on outdoor play, including risks and limitations, beyond teachers’ own beliefs on children’s needs.

This article explores toddler – place relationships outdoors during early childhood education in Sweden. Informed by Tim Ingold’s theorization of movement, we explore toddlers’ embodied engagements with the preschool playground and how the human–non-human environments become entangled. The results show that, just as in the wider world, the processes enabling and limiting toddlers’ engagements in the playground are continuously in motion. Toddler–place relationships are continuously created through a mutual dependence between human and non-human entities. In this sense, toddlers’ engagements with playgrounds are not separate from the place through which they engage, but change place.

This text is an exploration of collaborative thinking and writing through theories, methods, and experiences on the topic of the child, children, and childhood. It is a collaborative written text (with 32 authors) that sprang out of the experimental workshop Child Studies Multiple. The workshop and this text are about daring to stay with mess, “un-closure” , and uncertainty in order to investigate the (e)motions and complexities of being either a child or a researcher. The theoretical and methodological processes presented here offer an opportunity to shake the ground on which individual researchers stand by raising questions about scientific inspiration, theoretical and methodological productivity, and thinking through focusing on process, play, and collaboration. The effect of this is a questioning of the singular academic ‘I’ by exploring and showing what a plural ‘I’ can look like. It is about what the multiplicity of voice can offer research in a highly individualistic time. The article allows the reader to follow and watch the unconventional trial-and-error path of the ongoing-ness of exploring theories and methods together as a research community via methods of drama, palimpsest, and fictionary.

Den här kvalitativa artikeln baseras på intervjuer med svenska adoptivfamiljer och undersöker hur barn och föräldrar resonerar kring motiven till att göra en adoptionsåterresa. Genom en kombination av teorier om samtida föräldraskap och barns röst undersöks barns och föräldrars perspektiv både åtskilt och tillsammans. Artikeln visar att det i första hand är föräldrar, ibland i samråd med barnen, som initierar adoptionsåterresorna. Vidare visar analyserna att adoptionsåterresor är förenade med möjligheter och risker för både föräldrar och barn. Föräldrar tar, och tillskrivs via allmänna rekommendationer, ett stort ansvar för att bestämma om och när det i såfall är bäst att genomföra en adoptionsåterresa. Är det när barnet är litet eller vuxet? Artikeln visar hur adoptionsåterresor skapas i samtal mellan barn och föräldrar och blir till i ett dynamiskt, och stundtals motsägelsefullt, nätverk av allmänna rekommendationer, rädslor, förväntningar och önskningar om att göra det som är ”rätt” för barnet både nu och sen.

Based on interviews with Swedish adoptive families, this qualitative article explores children and parents’ motives for a family adoption return trip (to the country of origin of the adopted child). Through a combination of theories about contemporary parenthood and children’s perspectives, the stories of children and parents are explored both together and separately. The article shows that it is primarily the parents, sometimes in consultation with the children, who initiate the trips. The analysis also shows that adoption return trips are associated with opportunities as well as risks for both parents and children. Parents carefully consider when to take a return trip. Is it when the child is young or when she or he is older? The article shows how adoption returntrips are constructed through conversations between children and parents. Return trips are informed by a dynamic and contradictory network of general recommendations, fears, expectations, and desires to do what is ”right” for the child in the now and in the future. 

This article explores what it means to listen to children by moving beyond the notion of voice and staying with the absences of children. In this way, we include the possibly lost, forgotten or unapproachable children in child and childhood research. Our methodological starting point is to listen by ‘staying with’ the absences of children’s verbal voices and physical bodies in two photographs. These photographs depict material artefacts connected to children in vulnerable situations: shrouds for wrapping stillborn babies’ bodies, and children’s shoes as an emblem of children living in hiding from domestic violence. The idea is to explore how we can listen to children whose verbal or embodied encounters we cannot or do not wish to display. Our aim is to listen to these absences and discuss how they influence and possibly reshape the practices of listening, as well as notions of the child and childhood.

In this article, we meet a seven-year-old boy, Matti, who was adopted from his birth country in Africa by a family in Sweden. We meet him together with his family as they are planning a family adoption return trip to his birth country and again after their return. We argue that an adoption return trip is a form of family travel and/or visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel. By methodologically using a so-called children’s perspective we are primarily focusing on Matti and how he talks about the return trip. We explore some key concepts from child studies through Matti’s relational encounters in the world. By presenting agency and cultural competence as something that is enacted in practice, we show how they are enacted through the dependencies between Matti, his mother and his sister. The analysis shows that cultural competence and agency are fluid in the sense that they can be changed by how topics of discussion are woven through one another. Staying with Matti’s lived practices makes it possible to elaborate on and demonstrate different forms of competence and agency that are important for understanding children as tourists and children’s roles in family travel.