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Studiens syfte var att undersöka verksamma förskollärares erfarenheter av inkluderande arbetssätt av alla barn i förskolan, samt hur de arbetar för att uppnå det. I studien tillämpades en kvalitativ forskningsansats. Data samlades in genom ett online frågeformulär med öppna frågor som analyserades med hjälp av tematisk analys. Deltagarna i undersökningen valdes genom ett bekvämlighetsurval och totalt deltog tolv förskollärare, tre män och nio kvinnor.Resultatet visade att samtliga förskollärare anser att förskolans miljö är viktig för att lyckas med inkludering. För ett lyckat inkluderingsarbete krävs att alla barn ska hitta en plats, där deras intressen tas tillvara och synliggörs. För detta krävs det enligt förskollärarna en organisation som kan skapa en gynnsam struktur över förskolans verksamhet och lärmiljöer. Samtliga förskollärare var eniga om att en tydlig struktur skapar trygghet i barngruppen. I resultatet framgår det att förskollärares engagemang samt en medvetenhet om sitt uppdrag är avgörande för förskolans inkluderingsarbete. Arbetslaget måste ha en samstämmig barnsyn, som inser vikten av alla barns rätt till delaktighet.

The aim of this paper is to analyse how Swedish grade three children are discursively positioned as pupils when they are taking national tests in mathematics and when they reflect on the testing situation afterwards. With support from theories about affective-discursive assemblages, we explore children's body language, emotions, and talk in light of the two overarching discourses that we believe frame the classroom: the 'testing discourse' and the 'development discourse'. Through the disciplinary power of these main discourses children struggle to conduct themselves in order to become recognized as intelligible subjects and 'ideal pupils'. The analysis, when taking into account how affects and discourses intertwine, shows that children can be in 'untroubled', 'troubled', or ambivalent subject positions.

Background: Most studies about young motherhood have focused on identifying how young mothers can be supported or on how notions of young motherhood are produced. However, there is still limited knowledge about the maternal identity work of young mothers. The overarching aim of this thesis was to explore the maternal identity work of young mothers and, as part of this, to study young motherhood in relation to different forms of parenting support. Method: For the first three papers, 17 young Swedish mothers aged 13–25 were interviewed 1 or 2 times each (in total 31 interviews). The interview conversations were analysed from the perspective of discursive psychology. For the fourth paper, three Facebook groups that offered parenting support online to young mothers were studied. Data from the three Facebook groups were analysed through network analysis, online ethnography, and telephone interviews with two administrators. The ethnographical data and interviews in this particular substudy were analysed through thematic content analysis. Theoretical perspectives: The identity work of the interviewed young mothers was analysed in relation to theories and debates about parenting and the life course, the risk society, and the notion of “good motherhood”. Findings: The findings of the thesis suggest (Papers 1, 2, and 3) that whether the interviewed young mothers followed or deviated from their expected life course seemed to have an impact on the degree to which their mothering was seen as “risky”. Furthermore (Paper 2), the mothers appeared to be discursively divided into three different levels of riskiness in their social contexts: less risky mothers, high risk mothers, and mothers seen as too risky for mothering. The mothers’ level of presumed riskiness seemed in turn to have meanings for which dominant and/or alternative motherhood discourses they could access and draw upon in a trustworthy way (or which motherhood discourses they lacked access to) when presenting their ma

The aim of this paper is to analyse how Swedish grade three children are discursively positioned as pupils when they are taking national tests in mathematics and when they reflect on the testing situation afterwards. With support from theories about affective-discursive assemblages, we explore children's body language, emotions, and talk in light of the two overarching discourses that we believe frame the classroom: the 'testing discourse' and the 'development discourse'. Through the disciplinary power of these main discourses children struggle to conduct themselves in order to become recognized as intelligible subjects and 'ideal pupils'. The analysis, when taking into account how affects and discourses intertwine, shows that children can be in 'untroubled', 'troubled', or ambivalent subject positions.

In this paper, we explore meanings of adulthood and youthfulness in relation to notions of life course, good motherhood, and girlhood among young mothers in Sweden. Our analysis was informed by a discursive psychological approach and was based on interview conversations with 17 mothers who were 13–25 years old at the birth of their first child. In our analysis, we identified two repertoires – the ‘social age’ repertoire and the ‘chronological age’ repertoire. The interviewees invoked the two repertoires to position themselves and others as either responsible adult mothers or as responsible youthful mothers. Meanings of adulthood are central within the idea of motherhood, and by deviating from their expected life course young mothers are often understood as non-adults who are incapable of fulfilling the developmental task of motherhood. Our work suggests that the maternal identity work of young mothers takes place within discourses of both adulthood and youthfulness.

Today, many countries spend a great deal of money and effort on programs for expert-guided parenting support to be carried out in face-to-face groups. One goal of such support is to target, help, and educate “risky” groups of parents, such as young parents. It is striking, however, that young parents have a conspicuously low degree of participation in this type of parenting support. Drawing on the assumption that many young parents go online to seek, give, and receive peer parenting support, this paper presents a case study of activities within three Facebook groups. Using a combination of social network analysis, online ethnography, and interviews, we analyze how social network relationships and discussions differ depending on whether the analyzed Facebook group in question is administrated by professionals or peers, what the role of professional experts is, and how young parents might use social media to take control of their own support needs. Our results indicate that some of the affordances provided by Facebook might contribute to a challenging of the roles of “skilled” professionals versus “risky” young parents.

Within the western understanding of a nuclear family and the idea of good motherhood, the need for grandparental support is commonly viewed as an expression of deficient motherhood. Young mothers are often seen as incapable of maternal practices and as being in need of support from their extended family. An alternative view is that too much support might result in the grandmothers taking on the role of mother. This paper explores research around the ambivalent meanings of grandparental support in young Swedish mothers’ narratives. In this research, we identified three repertoires: inhibiting, being-there-no-matter-what and responsibility. Mothers who were following their expected life course achieved a subject position as a ‘‘real mother’’ within a functioning nuclear family. Mothers deviating from their expected life course achieved a subject position as either a ‘‘mother in becoming’’ with a functional and supportive extended family or as a ‘‘real mother’’ with a dysfunctional and non-supportive extended family. In the case of young mothers who are seen as insufficient, motherhood might become negotiable and fluid between the biological mother and the young mother’s own mother.

In this article the focus is on young parents' engagement process in relation to participation in parenting support groups carried out at child welfare centers. This qualitative study focuses not only on young parents' reasons for participating or not participating in parenting support groups during different phases in their engagement process, but also on examining the circumstances that may contribute to such changes. The results show that these reasons can be divided into four categories: the staff, other participants, the social network, and practical circumstances. It also appears that these reasons change between different phases of their engagement process. Primarily three different circumstances contributed to variation in parents' reasons: difficulty in predicting the value of participation, increased closeness in relationships with staff and other parents, and the specific life phase in which young parents find themselves. The results have important implications for policy makers and practitioners in their work in formulating and updating parenting support; they also indicate what may be important to focus on in the recruitment of young parents, and also what may be crucial in regard to them completing their engagement in parent support groups.

In the Swedish risk-conscious family policy, which is dominated by parenting determinism, all mothers are produced as being “at risk”. This not only stresses women’s maternal identity work in general, it also causes marginalized forms of motherhood, such as young motherhood, to be understood as high-risk mothering. Through interviews, this paper explores how young Swedish mothers aged 13–25 understand and position their maternal identity within ideas of motherhood, and it illustrates how discursive meanings of risk and life course condition young women’s maternal identity work. Whether the mother is seen as deviating from or following her expected life course defines her riskiness as less risky motherhood, high-risk motherhood, or too risky for mothering, which in turn affects her access – or lack thereof – to the dominant maternal repertoires in her maternal identity work. Mothers seen as less risky were positioned within a relaxed, good-enough motherhood, invoking a new repertoire of common-sense mothering to counteract the risk-managing repertoire. Mothers seen as high risk struggled to position themselves as good-enough mothers and invoked the repertoires of intensive and risk-managing motherhood to strengthen this position. The youngest mothers (aged 13–16) who lacked access to the dominant maternal repertoires positioned themselves as a rather free and rebellious motherhood by invoking the counter-repertoire of commonsense motherhood.