Editorial: Superdiversity and the Nordic Model in ECEC

The aim of this Special Issue has been to create a platform for discussion for examining the concept of superdiversity within the Nordic region and within the field of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), as well as in relation to the ECEC teacher education and professional development. The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) are known for continually scoring high in international comparisons for quality of life and children’s educational outcomes, with a specific focus on democracy and equality. The region, with a combined population of over 26 million people, is considered innovative in implementing forward thinking policy development to support a spread-out population. The success of the Nordic region has much to do with specific culture and policies around well-established political intentions for families, children and preschool to allow stable funding, curriculum, guidelines and laws to be implemented (UNESCO, 2008). The success is often discussed in terms of the ‘Nordic model’, with a focus on promoting equality and independence for all, including equal opportunities between genders. This has also meant reforms to support parents, such as child allowances, parental leave and provision for preschool for all children. Some of the implementation in doing this differs across the Nordic countries. However, the ECEC provision has commonalities across the national contexts, with shared values and pedagogy around supporting children in being democratic, active, reflective, independent, and large amounts of the day dedicated to play, both indoors and outdoors.

Due to societal change and the increasingly intensified migration of the recent years, the Nordic countries are undergoing notable demographic changes—thus also their ‘old’ diversities are being complemented with ‘new’ ones (Vertovec 2015). Thereby also a growing number of the ECEC settings in the Nordic countries have increasingly become microcosms for the complex patterns of migration. The intersecting dynamic of diversities within both the society at large and within the cultural and religious minority groups—or superdiversity (Vertovec 2007)—is increasingly manifest in the ECEC educational settings, influencing all its operational levels from the contents and methods to educational partnership with families. After all, ECEC is often the first societal arena for migrant background families and children to enter and negotiate their values and identities, and cultural and national memberships (e.g. Poulter et al. 2016). Migration host countries have employed different policies and structures for dealing with diversity; for example, children’s language skills are generally well supported, especially in terms of the majority language of the host country. However, much less is known about the encountering of the cultural and religious or worldview identities of children, families, and staff in ECEC. This is particularly relevant when it comes to religious worldviews, which may be in stark contrast with the increasingly secular Nordic societal landscapes of religions and worldviews—for instance Sweden is, according to the Inglehart–Welzel Cultural Map and the World Values Survey, one of the most secularized countries in the world. (Kuusisto et al., forthcoming.) Lutheranism, even in this largely secularized form, holds a strong sociohistorical presence in the Nordic countries. With that, it is also closely entwined with nation-construction in the Nordic countries (Poulter et al 2016; Thomasson 2015; Lappalainen 2006; 2009; Berglund 2014), which may create notable tensions of exclusion and otherness also in the ECEC contexts (Poulter et al 2016; Lappalainen 2009).

In order to gain a deeper understanding of the patterns of inclusion and exclusion in relation to the ECEC and the Nordic Model, it is essential to further explore the complexities of superdiversity in relation to these. According to Vertovec (2019), superdiversity points to the new migration patterns and that not only included different combinations of traits such as gender and age, but that their various combinations and the dynamic interaction between these has created new hierarchical social positions, thereby generating new patterns of segregation, prejudice and inequality, and emerging forms of racism. Furthermore, Vertovec sees that these societal changes have also brought along new experiences of space and “contact” as well as new forms of cosmopolitanism, and creolization, which he connects to the recent discussions of conviviality and multiculture. (Vertovec 2019.) By this means, in this Special Issue, we are interested in how these societal movements and alterations influence the Nordic ECEC—its policies, practices, pedagogies, and daily encounters. How the changes are rooted in the sociohistorical developments in the Nordic settings, and how the diversities within both the minorities and what is perceived as the majority in any given context are visible in the ECEC. What is ECEC like as a space for the “contact” and encounters, and how are new forms of citizenship and belonging—or marginalization or exclusion—concretized in the Nordic ECEC settings. The Special Issue explores these issues from the perspectives of the various Nordic national settings.

In the first article, Alicja Renata Sadownik presents her research in the Norwegian ECEC context, examining superdiversity as a trajectory of diversity, with a particular focus on what she calls the collection of differences to participation and becoming. Sadownik uses the notion of superdiversity as a lens through which various conceptualizations of diversity in Norwegian ECEC policies and professional understandings are made visible. Her article responds to the niche in previous literature on how diversity is actually understood by ECEC professionals and teacher students as a part of the institutional practice. Her findings highlight three types of conceptualizations for diversity. Firstly, the participants depict diversity as embodied by different children and families; secondly, they highlight diversity as a social context for every child’s becoming; and thirdly, they construct diversity in the interviews as equal participation. Sadownik notes how each of these accounts involve ways of working with children and families from minority and majority backgrounds, where the second-named conceptualization seemed to be most in line with the Norwegian curriculum, focusing on the process of formative development/becoming, which overlaps with and could be meaningfully supplemented by superdiversity. However, Sadownik sees superdiversity, as a sociological concept, requiring careful operationalization in dialogue with the field and its empirics.

This line of thought continues in the second article, where the connection between research and ECEC practitioners has been approached through the means of praxeological research design. The Finland and Sweden based researchers Silja Lamminmäki-Vartia, Saila Poulter and Arniika Kuusisto examine ECEC student teachers’ learning trajectory of emerging professionalism, focusing in particular to their professionalism in ECEC worldview education in the context of cultural and worldview superdiversity. Their specific interest is in what the students postulate as meaningful in their professional learning processes and why, and what kinds of directions this professional value learning process has taken. Lamminmäki-Vartia et al. gathered data over a year-long learning process in a group with seven ECEC students and six in-service ECEC teachers, through survey responses, reflective learning diaries, and retrospective in-depth interviews with the students. Building on previous research on value learning along life trajectory (e.g. Kuusisto & Gearon 2017), Lamminmäki-Vartia et al. apply and further develop a conceptual model for depicting the development of emergent ECEC teacher professionalism, with particular focus on early worldview education and ECEC superdiversity.

Teacher’s professional perspective to diversity is also the focus of the following, third article by Anette Ringen Rosenberg, where she presents an overview on the literature focusing on the teaching in issues of diversity within ECEC and how that has been seen in research literature. She notes that so far, the research on social studies within ECEC, and how early childhood teachers work to familiarize children with social studies contexts, is scarce. Ringen Rosenberg’s article explores the ways in which the ECEC teacher can work to ensure children’s social studies education with a specific focus on cultural diversity. More specifically, the enquiry here has been guided by the question: How does previous educational research show that early childhood teachers can use social studies to address diversity with and amongst children? The analysis uncovers four scopes of research across 26 studies from different countries. Ringen Rosenberg notes that previous research has contributed into knowledge on cultural diversity, anti-discrimination, human rights, as well as on community and society as means to familiarize children with diversity and related matters. Each of the here presented four research scopes addresses the knowledge status and opportunities for future research within the particular area. Ringen Rosenberg concludes by discussing the critical educational challenge of a paradox in familiarizing children with diversity, where the ECEC teacher risks conveying biased information and stereotypical views and highlighting cultures in discriminatory ways.

The fourth article connects to this topic by presenting Kristin Karlsdottir’s and Johanna Einarsdottir’s study on the exploring and supporting democracy and agency for children with diverse backgrounds in Icelandic ECEC. The authors contextualize the study in the societal changes during the past decades in Iceland, with increasing numbers of children in ECEC with other home languages than Icelandic. The article aims to promote a discussion on how, or if, Nordic values can be reflected in preschool practice, and discusses this especially in relation to multicultural education. Karlsdottir and Einarsdottir note that in planning multicultural education, the ideas, theories and methods seek support from neighboring notions like democracy, social justice and children’s agency. Their analysis illustrates how children with multicultural backgrounds negotiate their belonging on the verge of being marginalized in their peer group. The authors illustrate that in line with Nordic policy, preschool teachers can support vulnerable children and work against marginalization. They suggest that ECEC teachers can use their power position as adult professionals in making the ECEC practices more democratic for all children. In order to sustain social justice for all children in ECEC, Karlsdottir and Einarsdottir highlight that ECEC practice should aim towards supporting equity, rather than only equality, by valuing and meeting the needs and interests of all children.

Finally, a similar line of thought is continued in the fifth article of the Special Issue, where Ole Henrik Hansen, Stig Broström and Anders Skriver Jensen examine the democratic, caring and disciplinary values in the context of Danish ECEC. The authors highlight that as the teachers and caregivers organize children’s everyday life in ECEC settings to support children’s well-being, learning and development, their organizational decisions, such as the daily schedule or activities and the behavioral expectations, are guided by a set of ideas, norms and values, which they may or may not be conscious of. The conceptual framework for the study draws from democracy education, communicative action, educational content and children’s democratic formation, caring values, and disciplinary values, applying Biesta’s (2009) ideas about democracy, democratization and inclusion. Hansen et al. aim to offer an increased understanding of how democratic, caring and disciplinary values are communicated and negotiated between adults and children (ages 0–5). The article sets particular attention to whether these values are animated individually or in a more unified fashion. The study is based on a data set of video-recorded interactions between children and teachers during lunch, circle time and free activities. Hansen, Broström and Skriver Jensen illustrate through their findings the nature and extent to which teachers expect children to follow and participate in the social order that the adults have established for them, as well as the ways in which empathic practitioners create space for children to influence changes in the social order.

The articles thereby provide multiple views of diversity in the Nordic early childhood education and care contexts, with multiple intersecting points across the Special Issue. Temporality and change is one of the prevalent topics: both in terms of children’s growth and development, ECEC teacher students’ value learning and emerging professionalism, and continuous professional development of in-service teachers. Also both recent and on-going societal changes are visible across the articles—increasing intersecting diversities or superdiversity in ECEC. Under difficult times—such as the presently on-going unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic—the role of safety and resilience constructing and maintaining structures for young children, such as predictable everyday routines, and relationships with secure adults, is highlighted. In the Nordic countries, many educational institutions for older children and students saw a temporary closure on their physical premises during the spring 2020, when teachers and students transferred into on-line learning. Nordic ECEC, however, has to a great extent been kept operational throughout, and its critical significance for a functioning society has been emphasized. Not only has it been stressed that ECEC enables key workers to attend to the societal crisis, but also the crucial role of societal early childhood education and care for the well-being of all children—especially those who are more vulnerable due to socioeconomic backgrounds or at-risk families, many factors intersecting—has been accentuated.

The articles in this Special Issue on Superdiversity and the Nordic Model in ECEC contribute to the field with many important findings and insights, but also with further questions. We hope it can function as a discussion opener for further research on diversities and values in ECEC teacher professionalism, teacher education, policy and practice.

Professor Arniika Kuusisto (Stockholm University) and Professor Susanne Garvis (Swinburne University of Technology),

Guest Editors