Preschool teacher educators’ conceptions about teaching early literacy to future preschool teachers

Abstract

This study aims to examine what conceptions preschool teacher educators in Norway have about the subject fields of children’s language learning and early literacy. To investigate what the teacher educators in these two subject fields hold as important, we have interviewed twelve teacher educators having a master or PHD degree, six from the subject of Norwegian and six from the subject of Pedagogy. The research question is: What conceptions do teacher educators have about teaching in the subject fields of children’s language learning and early literacy in preschool teacher education? The results show that the teacher educators had quite different perspectives on what to teach future preschool teachers in the subject fields of children’s language learning and early literacy. The teacher educators in Norwegian talked of early literacy as a field of great importance, but gave equal status to children’s literature, and said that they used more time to teach literature than to teach children’ language learning and early literacy. The teacher educators in Pedagogy said they thought of children’s language learning as having less importance than play. They all claim that the teacher students do not have solid educational knowledge when they graduate from the Preschool Teacher Education.