ABSTRACT

This article presents professionals’ narratives about valuable encounters with young children in early childhood education (ECE) settings. The study aims to provide an in-depth perspective on how professionals talk about ethics in practice, and the values addressed in the narratives. Initially, professionals in Swedish ECE settings defined their understanding of a valuable encounter with a child and then used a digital app to self-register 10 such encounters during one day. After the self-registration, we interviewed the professionals and they told us about the encounters they had experienced. We identified three themes concerning who was the focus of the encounters: the professional, the child, or both reciprocally. By using a narrative approach and Nussbaum’s ethical theoretical perspective, we show how different rationales were interwoven in the stories and that situated emotions were enacted and reflected. Finally, we noticed that many valuable encounters took place in ‘in-between spaces’. They were not planned for or organised, but occurred spontaneously through professionals’ sensitive employment of an ethics in practice.

摘要

本文介绍了专业人士对幼儿教育 (ECE) 环境中与幼儿的宝贵相遇的叙述。该研究旨在就专业人士如何谈论实践中的道德以及叙述中所涉及的价值观提供一个深入的视角。最初，瑞典 ECE 环境中的专业人员定义了他们对与孩子的一次有价值的相遇的理解，然后使用数字应用程序在一天内自行注册了 10 次这样的相遇。自我注册后，我们采访了专业人士，他们向我们讲述了他们所经历的遭遇。我们确定了与谁是相遇的焦点有关的三个主题：专业人士、儿童，或两者兼而有之。通过使用叙事方法和努斯鲍姆的伦理理论视角，我们展示了故事中不同的基本原理是如何交织在一起的，以及情境情感是如何被制定和反映的。最后，我们注意到许多有价值的相遇发生在“中间空间”。它们不是计划或组织的，而是通过专业人员在实践中对道德的敏感运用而自发发生的。