In a newly opened childcare institution we met Anja, who has worked 20 years with kindergartens and is now the leader of Lille Arena in Amager, Copenhagen.
For the meeting we brought a dialogue tool, intended
to be the starting point for a conversation. The dialogue tool was a map of the
different stakeholders we could identify, in and around kindergartens, along
with what-if questions written on tags that was turned around one by one. A
question was, as an example: “What if the parents knew everything about their
children’s day in the kindergarten?” The questions were based on pedagogic
literature and the previous visit in a kindergarten, and some of the pedagogic
and ethical dilemmas that can occur between various envisioned efforts.
Anja advocated for full transparency in between all
stakeholders in and around the kindergarten. It is good to know as much as
possible about the children, and across the gap between the day in the
kindergarten and the day with the parents. Open dialogue enables good
collaborations, and every information and insight will benefit and make
kindergarten and parents more qualified. It is difficult to communicate
everything with small children, therefore in some cases grown ups are
responsible.
Yet, she could also recognize certain risks of
everyone knowing everything about everyone, and the means to achieve this
knowledge. For the documentation of the information, Anja pointed out the
difficulty of measuring the soft values of the pedagogic field and put it into
facts. The subjective evaluations of children are difficult to grasp
quantitatively, and their exchange happens through daily interaction.
She also empathized that children should have privacy,
and not be monitored in all corners. It is important that children get to know,
and develop relationship to personal, social and spatial limits. They must learn to fend for themselves and be self-reliant. However, in the
privacy and independency of the children you must be able to ensure safety and soundness.
