European Journal of Teacher Education

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The research circle - a tool for preschool teachers’

professional learning and preschool development

Annika Elm & Ingrid Nordqvist

To cite this article: Annika Elm & Ingrid Nordqvist (2019) The research circle - a tool for
preschool teachers’ professional learning and preschool development, European Journal of Teacher
Education, 42:5, 621-633, DOI: 10.1080/02619768.2019.1652899
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2019.1652899

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EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION
2019, VOL. 42, NO. 5, 621–633
https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2019.1652899

ARTICLE

The research circle - a tool for preschool teachers’

professional learning and preschool development
Annika Elm and Ingrid Nordqvist
Faculty of Education and Business Studies / Gävle, University of Gävle, Sweden

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The article explores a professional learning programme, a research Received 11 March 2018
circle, in which preschool teachers and researchers collaborate on Accepted 25 July 2019
content relating to sustainable development, science and technology. It
KEYWORDS
investigates how collaborations between preschool teachers and Preschool teacher;
researchers can contribute to professional learning and preschool professional learning;
development. The research focuses on experiences of participation in science; sustainable
research circles and makes use of Participatory Action Research development; technology
(PAR). The data consists of twelve preschool teachers’ written
documentation as preparation for seminars in the research circle and
semi-structured interviews with eight preschool teachers. The analysis
explores three bodies of social and educational change: individuals,
teams and orga-nisations. The overall conclusion is that participation in
a research circle support preschool teachers to become more aware of
their own practices, address issues and challenges and make
improvements in a collaborative and reflective way, it is a useful tool for
preschool teachers’ professional learning and preschool development.

Introduction
In the last decade, school reforms and revised policy documents in Sweden and other
countries have led to changes in scientific practices, changed attitudes and the inclusion of
pedagogical content in preschool teachers’ professional learning. However, how the revised
curriculum has been introduced in preschools and schools has been contested. Crowley
(2017) argues that commercial products have tended to dominate and control the imple-
mentation of curriculum. This article is in line with Crowley and suggests that ideas about
professional learning in the preschool needs to change, so that it is instead based on
research, engagement and agency. The challenge for preschool teachers is to be seen not
as recipients of knowledge but as active producers. The concept of professional learning
(Timperley 2011) is based on mutual engagement in procedures, tools, concepts, children’s
development, play and learning. In Sweden, there is a growing focus on learning about
science in the preschool, and the implications this has for different teaching approaches.
Research points out growing demands for preschool teachers to acquire knowledge about
science and then implement it in their daily activities (Fleer 2009; Fleer, Gomes, and March
2014). Akerson, Flick, and Lederman (2000) note that children are more likely to

CONTACT Annika Elm annika.elm@hig.se Faculty of Education and Business Studies /

GävleUniversity of Gävle, Sweden
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction
in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
622 A. ELM AND I. NORDQVIST

participate in science activities that are interesting and contribute to their scientific
under-standing. There is an agreement that the quality of teachers is related to the
quality of education and development outcomes in young children (Egert, Fukkink, and
Eckhardt 2018; Kelchtermans, Smith, and Vanderlinde 2018). According to Van Driel
and Berry (2012) teachers’ lack of pedagogical content knowledge in teacher education
practice has been regarded as a barrier and demonstrates teachers’ professional
development as a complex process that is highly specific to the context, situation and
person. This complexity implies that professional development programmes aimed to
develop teachers’ professional learn-ing should be organised in ways that are closely
aligned to teachers’ professional practice, including opportunities to enact instructional
strategies and materials and to reflect, individually and collectively, on their experiences.
Moreover, Owen (2014) argues that core professional learning elements such as ‘shared
values and vision, collegiality and joint practical activities’ are important parts in
professional learning programmes in order to strengthen teachers’ professional growth
and children’s learning. To reach collegiality in ambition to develop science teaching in
preschool is not an individual project. It is more like Scanlan (2011) argues a question of
learning in the organization as a whole which demands, what Scanlan refers to as
boundary-spanning individuals, teachers who have communica-tion with areas outside
their unit and play important roles within and across their commu-nity of practice. In
Sweden preschool teachers work together in teams in their unit and together with
preschool teachers at other departments. According to Nilsson and Elm (2017), the
challenges include developing professional knowledge about science teaching, creating
opportunities for preschool teachers to participate in professional development
programmes and providing them with tools to reflect on and develop science teaching in
preschool.
The main aim of this study is to explore a professional learning programme, a
research circle, in which preschool teachers and researchers collaborate on content
relating to science, technology and sustainable development. The research question
is: -How can collaborations between preschool teachers and researchers contribute
to preschool tea-chers’ professional learning and preschool development?
Academic work traditionally involves the researcher planning and implementing a research
project. The researcher collects the data, analyses and interprets the results and makes
recommendations. The same tradition works for teacher educators who plan the course and
decide what literature should be used and what assignments should be solved. It can be
characterised as a vertical process. As Meeus, Cools, and Placklé (2018) argue, teacher
educators play a crucial role in the educational process for teachers in order to maintain high-
quality education. They conclude that teacher educators have a tendency to consider
themselves a teacher of teachers. Therefore, important questions arise on the role of the
teacher educator in the process of professional learning. Rönnerman and Salo (2014) argue
that there is a strong Nordic educational tradition based on democracy and shared values,
where the concepts of ‘bildung’ and ‘folkbildung’ are central. Bildung is referred to as a
journey that gives a framework for how education and action research can be understood.
The basic idea of the concept of bildung as a journey is that you start in the familiar, acquire
new knowledge together with others that help you to see the familiar from a new angle, and
from there formulate new questions. Preschool teachers’ professional learning, preschool
development and the improvement of practices are all dependent on preschool teachers who
are willing to undertake the journey of bildung. However, more
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION
623

knowledge is needed about the qualitative processes that take place during the journey.
This study is a contribution to an enhanced understanding of these processes.

Research circles based on participation action research

The authors draw on the theoretical perspective of Participation Action Research (PAR).
In PAR, the interaction between research and activities in the field is important for
promoting each other’s work and goals. The ambition is that theory and practice will be
reciprocal (Brydon-Miller, Greenwood, and Maguire 2003). As Lundberg and Starrin
(2001) explain, a group of people tackling and carrying out a research project together
with a researcher is characterised by co-learning, participation, a desire to improve and
change and to jointly produce knowledge that will lead to organizational transforma-tion.
It is a cyclical process that involves, research, action and reflection. In terms of
professional learning in the preschool the assumption is that by generating new knowl-
edge based on local circumstances, research can contribute to changes in the domains
in which the research is conducted (Elm Fristorp and Johansson 2015). In this approach,
researchers can gain access to material in natural environments at the same time as
participants gain access to research. Thus, the two main objectives – one for research
and the other for field operations – are closely intertwined.
Lundberg and Starrin (2001) emphazise that the participants in a research circle are
representative of the issues to be processed. The participants have the relevant knowledge
and experiences that give the research circle legitimacy. This includes the importance of
good support and communications between the activities that the participants represent, and
that the participants have a good overview of the work of the research circle.

Method
This study is based on a qualitative approach that enables researchers to gather in-depth and
nuanced information about preschool teachers’ science-based practices. The research circle
that is in focus here met once a month (for a full day) at the university for the period of one
year. The overarching theme for the research circle was teaching science and sustain-ability
in preschool. The implementation of the research circle was jointly discussed and planned by
the participants and the researcher. The preschool teachers’ knowledge of their own
everyday practice was in focus all the time, and discussions and reading aimed to give new
insights and a departure to improve practice. Between the seminars, activities were
undertaken on a shared electronic platform. Every seminar was prepared for by reading texts
and making an entry in the common group journal. This virtual space and the seminar room
were supportive areas and gave everybody an opportunity to express their ideas and views.
During the seminars, the researcher contributed to the process of relating the preschool
teachers’ knowledge about their own practices to scientific knowledge in a critical way. The
seminars in the first part of the year were devoted to understanding the conditions under
which scientific knowledge is created, reading articles and other scientific texts and searching
for articles in databases relevant to the participants’ own areas of interest. In the second part
of the year, the participants chose to observe and identify development areas in their
everyday practices and to describe these as starting points for development work. In this
work, the participants used tools and concepts they
624 A. ELM AND I. NORDQVIST

had encountered when reading and discussing the scientific articles and literature. During the
second part, the researcher visited the workplace of all participants to discuss and reflect
together about their development work. The research circle ended with the participants
presenting reports about their own development work in their respective workplaces.

Participants
Twelve preschool teachers from different preschools and municipalities took part in the
research circle. Prior to the start of the research circle there were lectures on sustainable
development held at the university with invited researchers addressing all preschool teachers
in the region. In connection with these lectures, information was given about the start of the
research circle. The twelve preschool teachers who participated had voluntarily responded to
an invitation from the university and nearby municipalities in collaboration.
They represented a wide age span, from relatively newly graduated teachers to
those with over 30 years of experience in the profession. All participants were
engaged in supervising student preschool teachers during their practice. The fact
that they came from different preschools and had different kinds of experiences of
preschool develop-ment proved to be of great value.

Data collection
The data consists of two different data sets. The first set consists of written entries
in the common group journal from the twelve participants in their preparations for
four seminars during the year of the research circle. The written entries were
compiled in one document containing 29,000 words. The second data set consists
of twelve hours recorded and transcribed semi-structured interviews with eight of
the preschool tea-chers. The interviews were conducted six months after the
completion of the research circle. The transcribed interview data amounted to 146
pages. Thus, the first data set captures the process of professional learning among
the participants during the year of the research circle, and the second data set, the
interviews, explores how the preschool teachers reflected on their learning and
development through participating in the research circle and how they had pursued
the development in their workplace. The following interview questions were posed:

● What has your participation in the research circle meant for your own
professional learning as a preschool teacher?
● What has your participation in the research circle meant for the professional
development at your workplace?
● Tell something about the content you studied during your participation in the
research circle and if – in what way do those issues impact the daily work
together with the children?
● Are there any specific issues you studied during the research-circle that has
come to be important in your daily practice?

Research ethical considerations were made in accordance with The Swedish Research
Council’s guidelines. The preschool teachers who gave their permission to participate in
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 625

the study were informed of the purpose and publishing of the study. They were ensured
the data could not be traced to individual respondents or workplaces. Confidentiality was
assured and coded initials are used in the presentation of the results (Hermerén 2011).

Data analysis
The two data sets were analysed separately firstly to clarify the professional learning
process that took place during the year of the research circle and secondly to find out
the impact of the research circle as a professional learning programme. The analysis is
a thematic content analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006), with a focus on the meaning of
what is said, not how it is said. Thematic analysis is a qualitative analytic method that is
used in many disciplines and provides a rich, detailed and complex account of data. As
Braun and Clarke argue, it is a method that requires researchers to be clear about what
they do, why they do it and how the analysis is conducted.
The analyses of the two data sets in this study were part of an inductive process from
a) transcription → b) identifying emergent initial codes → c) searching for themes → d)
reviewing and revising themes → e) defining and naming themes → f) formulating the
result (with the starting point in identified and named themes). The authors worked
separately in the first three steps and together in the final part of the analysis. First, the
written entries were compiled from the electronic platform on which they were published,
while the interviews were transcribed verbatim. Some of the statements made in the
interviews that did not correspond to the subject were not transcribed. Second, the data
was read separately by the authors, analysed by means of thematic content analysis
(Braun and Clarke 2006) and assigned initial codes. The third step involved searching
for overall themes, based on the initial codes. In this step, both researchers sorted the
data under each theme separately. The authors worked together in the fourth step to
compare and review the data and revise the themes. In this process, similarities were
identified in the themes that had emerged in the analysis of both the written entries and
the interviews. Related examples of the participants’ learning were examined and
refined until consensus was reached. Fifth, to establish the validity of the coding and
identified themes, the authors worked together to finally define and name the themes.
The main data was then compared with the themes and provided a critical overview in
terms of aspects being overemphazised, under represented, too vague or biased. The
final step in the analysis, with a starting point in the themes, was to formulate the results.

Results
The results are presented in two parts. The first part is based on the written entries
and the second on the results of the interviews. Finally, a conclusion is drawn based
on the analysis of the written entries and the interviews.

The written entries

The participating preschool teachers were encouraged to read the scientific texts from a
practitioner’s perspective in order to create a link between their everyday practices and
the theories they encountered. During the seminars, the written entries formed
626 A. ELM AND I. NORDQVIST

a common source of experience-based knowledge that was interpreted and looked

at from new angles. In the preschool teachers’ texts, three themes were identified
that showed how professional learning was expressed in the framework of the
research circle in focus here.
These themes are:

● Approaching research
● The importance of concepts
● A desire to act

Approaching research
The entries in the group journal show that the teachers sometimes found the
scientific texts difficult to grasp. One participant described the process like this:

ML: – This chapter was not the easiest to grasp, (really glad that we agreed that these
reading logs are broad!) When I read I found myself suddenly seeing a jumble of words
that I couldn’t put together. On a piece of paper I listed the biggest differences in these
two ways of seeing the world, modernity – postmodernity. It was then easier to interpret
and was clear that these are two quite different ways of looking at people, the world,
truth, knowledge and power.

As the texts that were discussed during the seminars were challenging, it was felt
important to create a common space for discussion that was safe and based on
trust. The participants were also introduced to scientific databases by the university
library staff. This was both a new experience and a new source of information for
the preschool teachers.
The opportunity to search for articles of special interest for each individual turned out to be
important for an understanding of the diversity of objectives and means within research.

BG: – Here I understand the value of using a scientific basis, research, as a starting point
and reference frame. Using different methods for evaluation and review become significant.

The preschool teachers taking part in the research circle were encouraged to relate
what they were reading to their everyday practices. This proved to be a fruitful
approach to research, in that they acquired both a theoretical understanding and the
scientific tools with which to develop their practices.

The importance of concepts

The encounter with the scientific literature and the articles made the participants
reflect on the importance of concepts as tools for understanding and developing
their every-day practices.

FH: – When I read the literature I had many thoughts and eye-openers that I related to
the activities I’m involved with at work. One example I thought of is that we haven’t
discussed or even mentioned the concept of quality in the team this year. Why not?
What does quality in the preschool actually mean for those of us in the team? I think it’s
important to explain to each other how we view the concept of quality. We would also
need to discuss the concept’s different meanings.
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION
627

The written entries show that the participants moved from an everyday understanding of
concepts to one that was more elaborate, as the following example shows:

FH: – Power, norms, discourses . . . my head is spinning. What a lot is going on and affects
us, but it’s as though we don’t see it. But through awareness these concepts are filled with
content. My spontaneous reflection of the word “power” is negative, it makes me think of
involuntariness. But when I read about power I become aware of that, and how we are
surrounded and affected by power almost of the time in many different ways.

This describes a process of seeing things that are taken for granted in the everyday
practice in a more complex and elaborated way. The concepts thus become tools
that allow the participants to look at their everyday work from a distance.
The reading of the scientific articles and texts enabled the preschool teachers to
see and acquire words to describe a well-known phenomenon. Relating their
reading to their everyday work in a reflective way also meant that the preschool
teachers’ horizons were widened.
ML: – Much of what we do in the preschool is about what the book describes as ethics
in the encounter with “the Other”. The encounters and communications with others are
ways for us to gain new perspectives and understanding and to make our own informed
choices and then develop them further. Everyone has their own reality, and in the
encounter with others we are able to broaden our own horizons.

As they were encouraged to read the texts from the perspective of a practitioner,
they integrated theory and practice in their written entries and further elaborated
their understanding during the seminars.

A desire to act
The preschool teachers’ texts expressed a desire to act in order to change and
develop the work and processes in their own workplaces. Below is an example of
how a writer became aware of aspects that needed to be improved.
JN: -Working with quality and development in the preschool is a collegial task and means
that together we need to continuously reflect on, discuss and analyse what we do in
everyday life, why, how it benefits the child and the children’s group, what we are going to
do, change, etc. If we are aware that this is something we need to do together, I don’t think
that we’ll blame the lack of time, or that the children’s groups are too big, but instead create
an opportunity for change, i.e. we ensure the quality of our preschool.

When relating their reading to their workplace the preschool teachers identified
devel-opment areas they wanted to improve together with their colleagues.

The interviews
The results of the analyses of the written entries and the interviews indicate
similarities and differences. The following three themes emerged from the analyses:

● A change of acts and views

● Scientific-based knowledge for understanding preschool practice
● Understanding preschool placement in relation to other contexts
628 A. ELM AND I. NORDQVIST

A change of acts and views

The results show that preschool teachers discovered that logbook writing, observations,
the documentation of current situations, interviews and development projects
undertaken during the period of the research circle contributed to the continuing
development of their daily practices. One of the preschool teachers expressed it like this:

IE: – I had done observations before, but now it’s different. Both the others in the team
and myself have become aware of how we work in a different way than before. Before
we didn’t observe how we worked, but instead observed the children. This has meant
that we have gained different perspectives of ourselves and what we do. I or we often
describe what we are doing or have done when discussing something we need to work
more on. In this way we’ve started to talk to each other in a different way. It’s not just
about what we should do, but more about why we choose to do it in a certain way.

The results also show that the preschool teachers who participated in the research circle
found strategies that contributed to preschool development. When documenting their current
situations, the preschool teachers exchanged views on various aspects of their work:

RO: – When we need to improve something today, something we’ve done and
discussed how to develop, for example working with recycling or composting, we can
describe where we are at present. We observe how we work together with the children
and write logbooks. I photograph and sometimes record the children and listen to . . .
and write, all this helps us to capture the moment and gives us an insight into where we
are right now. So we document and have all the material available in our discussions.
We use our own descrip-tions of the present as the starting point, this will be important
later on when we evaluate the work we’ve done.

These descriptions of the present situation also became part of the preschool
teachers’ quality assessment work. The descriptions helped to identify factors that
would improve the daily work in both the short- and long-term.
The following quote illustrates the importance of documenting the current
situation as a basis for systematic collegial work:
EG: – When I discuss the current situation descriptions with the others in the
department we’ve been able to discuss the things that don’t work very well. It’s not as
personal. Sometimes we have to step back from what I’ve written and discuss it in a
more focused way. Some of us have also documented different observations. Often the
discussions lead to making things visible, so that we can immediately see the things
that we can do something about. Then there are other things and issues that take
longer to improve. But, we’ve made things visible, can see them and can talk about
them together and start to do something about them in a more systematic way.

In their collegial work, the documentation of the current situation contributes to the
preschool teachers distancing themselves from their daily practices and makes
them evaluate their actions and activities. Further, it provides a different starting
point for change in the preschool development. In this way, the collective knowledge
of a team becomes qualitatively different to that of a single individual.

Scientific-based knowledge for understanding preschool practice

The result shows that the preschool teachers anchored their experiences from the
research circle in their preschool development plans. This had a bearing on how the
work in the respective preschools was carried out:
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 629

SK: – When we worked on the building and construction project everyone in the depart-
ment was included. So were the parents./ . . . /When I told my colleagues about the
discussions in the research circle at the university it gave us renewed energy. We could
start, yes we changed in a way how we looked at what we did. This has continued as
we are now working with the theme on building and construction together with the
children. We analyse what the children do and what interests them in a different way
than we did before. The discussions are much deeper and we actually talk in a different
way. We focus more on every child and follow the children’s processes in their play and
learning./ . . . /Those of us working together in the team continue and it’s become much
easier to pinpoint what we need to change and do with the children.

When the teams jointly discussed the information they had collected and reflected
on the resulting documentation, they related the findings to their own experiences.
However, several of the preschool teachers expressed the importance of discussing
and reflecting on their own experiences in the light of the scientifically based
literature. Their experiences of participating in the research circle were important for
the continu-ing discussions about and reflections on their preschool practices:

PJ: – I had a real longing to get back to research. I’ve missed it in my working
life./ . . . /You might wonder why we haven’t done it, but it’s been a question of the
databases. I was able to search them in the research circle, but we have no access
otherwise. When I read the articles I realised that we actually did this and I got a real
kick. I shared everything with my colleagues, so we started our project together and
worked on the water theme. We did this by using some of the research results. We
were able to discuss what we planned to do and then did it together with the children
using different starting points. We compared the different results and discussed what
we could learn from them and what it meant for the continued work with the children at
the preschool. I now try to find literature that is connected to research results, because
it contributes to other discussions than those we had before at work.

Reading and assimilating the scientifically-based literature contributed to changes in

the following participant’s understanding of the preschool practice, how to work
together in a team and the importance of cooperation:
EG: – We now start projects in a different way by listing what we actually do and why. It can be
everything from the materials that we choose, it’s as though we just had to start in a different way
than before. I’ve thought about what it was like before, then we started with nothing but now we
start together and discuss and write down what we agree on. We can then visualise working with
recycling and how we will do it. It’s not just about sorting light bulbs and batteries any more./ . . .
/I’ve learned such a lot and the children ask questions all the time, so we have to constantly learn
more and we do this together. It’s not easy with all those research results, because they keep
changing all the time, but it’s made it much more fun and interesting.

It is clear that work on sustainable development, science and technology issues

con-tinued in the preschools after completing the research circle. The preschool
teachers who participated became engaged in various contexts and contributed to a
continuous process of development and change. The result shows that participation
in the research circle was valuable from the point of view of teamwork and for
spreading the word to other preschools in the municipality.

LA: – During my time in the research circle other preschool teachers in the municipality
became very interested in what we were doing. My preschool manager invited them to my
preschool and I told them about what we did and about participating in a research circle. It
630 A. ELM AND I. NORDQVIST

all just flowed and I talked about the development project, how we discussed research.
That was the first time and since then we’ve met during the spring and started the
network that we work in now. We meet and discuss various projects and what we can
do to improve the work with the children. A lot of exciting things are happening.

This indicates that the participants’ discussions and development work with
colleagues in their preschool team also improved in the areas of sustainable
development, science and technology and improved the quality of the work.

Understanding preschool placement in relation to other contexts

In order to respond to the required changes, several preschool teachers thought
that it was important to understand the context of the preschool placement in
relation to others. This involved the daily work being linked to the national
curriculum and local policy documents in order to understand the factors that
governed the preschool:

BF: – We discuss the curriculum and the points of departure of the objectives that we
work with in the team. Even if sustainability isn’t visible, in that the word itself is not
included, it’s everywhere in the curriculum. We have discussed it a lot in the team and
now it’s become part of the local work plan for our preschool. This means that what we
do is good for us and it will be good for the children as well.

Many of the preschool teachers expressed that the link with national policy
documents and local policy was important, as was understanding the wider context
of the educa-tional system:

TN: – The preschool is not just something that the children go to and then progress to
school. The preschool means something for society as a whole. What we do with the
children when we recycle the batteries is important for the environment in a bigger
perspective. When we had a lecture about our region being climate neutral, and saw
the first image of our planet, it was just so enormous. I have a good understanding of
how important we are in the preschool and we probably need to talk more about that.
What we do today with the children is so important for tomorrow, not just for ourselves
but actually for so many more. It’s us and the world.

The results show that when the participating preschool teachers talked about their
daily practices and understanding of the broader context, in which preschools are a
part, they included insights on preschool activities that were linked to international
and national development. The main aspect was the importance of understanding
the work in the preschool in relation to development in other areas of society:

RO: – There are so many different questions that I can connect to today. There are very clear links
to the development of industry that I’d not thought about before. I realised that when we met XX
during the research circle and he talked about industrial development. For me, working with a
theme like energy together with the children was so very different and I took it with me to the
preschool and my colleagues. We have different issues to build on now than we had before. This
has meant a lot to us and I think we need such connections more often.

Opportunities to take part in other areas of society and continually discuss these
issues with colleagues and researchers were thought to lead to a targeted skills
development that influenced and contributed to a collective responsibility.
 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION 631

Discussion
Rönnerman and Salo (2014) highlight that professional learning can be described as a
journey between the known to the unknown in a dynamic relationship. The start is in the
familiar, where the reflection with others contributes to see the familiar from another point of
view. Participation in a research circle is characterised by support, trust, affirmation and
criticism, which in turn means analysis, evaluation and quality. The results of this study show
that preschool teachers’ encounters with other perspectives make their own taken for granted
assumptions visible and contribute to other insights into the daily preschool practice. Meeting
other preschool teachers and researchers was both inspiring and challen-ging. Reading and
discussing literature and scientific articles of their own choice during the course made it clear
that listening to others, rephrasing what had been read to fit the different contexts in the
preschool were important and helped to create a distanced closeness to their own practices.
The preschool teachers identified specific aspects of their practice and carried out the work
systematically. They formulated questions that provided an inventory of the tools they used
with the children. They worked, documented and analysed the results of the various activities
that were undertaken together with colleagues in their unit. In addition, the preschool
teachers increased their own and others’ under-standings of the daily practice and developed
different kinds of cooperation, both within the preschool team and with other preschools in the
municipality. In this way they acted as boundary-spanner individuals and as Scanlan (2011)
argues, played an important commu-nicative role for development within and across
preschools.
According to Kelchtermans, Smith, and Vanderlinde (2018) a fundamental characteristic of
teacher educators’ expertise is its dual level which means they teach teachers and the
subject of their teaching is teaching. Findings from this study implicate a further level based in
the ability to admit the preschool teachers’ professional expertise in their daily practise. By
doing that, the teacher educator/researcher takes a stand from another point of view enabling
the fruitful meeting of scientific expertise and practical expertise. The meetings are
characterised by being collaborative, reflective and inclusive with the chil-dren’s learning and
development in focus. These meetings have been enriched by the researcher’s and each
preschool teacher’s experiences and the new and shared knowledge that is generated. This
approach is in line with Owen (2014) and Meeus, Cools, and Placklé (2018) who argue that
there are specific professional learning elements that promote high quality in education to
strengthen teachers’ learning as well as children’s learning. As indicated in this study, and in
previous studies, reflection sessions offer the participants a space (Rönnerman and Olin
2014; Elm Fristorp and Johansson 2015) in which to read and discuss authentic research
articles that contribute to the preschool teachers’ ability to articulate their complex reality. The
result implies that the preschool teachers are both experts (in relation to their own work) and
novices (in relation to research). This connection works in two different directions. The first is
that the preschool teachers are able to understand their practices and the conditions for the
preschool more fully with the aid of theoretical perspectives and research on sustainable
development, science and technol-ogy. The second is that when they are encouraged to
relate what they have learned to their own practices, they are able to understand research
from their own perspectives and contexts. As Timperley (2011) points out the collective
knowledge of a team thus becomes qualitatively different from what each individual can
possibly contribute on their own. We
632 A. ELM AND I. NORDQVIST

share the argumentation Van Driel and Berry (2012) highlight about the importance of
focusing on subject matter learning in programmes of teacher professional development, in
this case how to teach science and sustainability in preschool. Therefore, we argue that the
research circle offers a space for balanced collaboration between researchers and preschool
teachers in order to promote professional learning and preschool development.

Conclusion
This study indicates that the preschool teachers contributed to a conscious
professional development for the preschool in the areas of sustainable
development, science and technology. Additional factors that emerged were that the
preschool teachers increased their own and others’ understandings of the same
contexts by relating their own work to the written policies and to society in general.
New perspectives were acquired and the discussions during the seminars gave the
participants confidence to discuss and rethink their own practices. A cyclical process
was identified in the study of reflect – relate – react, which was followed by act when the
preschool teachers pursued their own development work in their respective preschools.
What is clear in this study is that the research circle involves a cyclical process that can
be used as a tool for preschool teachers’ professional learning, so they can adopt a
distant approach towards their own practices, can address issues and challenges and
make improvements in a collaborative and reflective way. The study also shows the
importance of the awareness of a scientific base in preschool teachers’ daily practices.
This is significant to the quality of supervising teacher students in teacher education
programmes. Although this study was conducted with a small group of preschool
teachers, important character-istics of professional learning and development have been
identified. The findings arise suggestions for further studies in other preschool contexts
with the approach of seeing preschool teachers as active producers of knowledge.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Annika Elm, Senior Lecturer, PhD, Curicculum Studies, University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden.
Ingrid Nordqvist, Lecturer, CuricculumStudies, University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden.

ORCID
Annika Elm http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4696-4142

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