Annika Månsson

Individual development plans from a critical didactic perspective: Focusing on Montessori- and Reggio Emilia- profiled preschools in Sweden

Individual development plans, which are sometimes designed as ‘agreements — contracts’, can be considered the most rigid type of regulation on the individual level in the history of preschool in Sweden. Today we speak about a deregulated school. This regulation seems to have changed its character, gradually drifting from school regulation to individual and self-regulation. The study aims to map and discuss the variation of content and positions for children in the documentation from all preschools in a municipality in the south of Sweden. Documentation and individual development plans (IDP) are studied from preschools with different pedagogical profiles. Materials from Montessori- and Reggio Emilia-inspired preschools are focused on. A critical didactic perspective refers to a discussion and critical scrutiny of the structure of contents, assessment and position of children in different types of documentation. The perspective leads to questions such as: how is content constructed, and what governs the choice of content in IDPs and documentation at the institutional and individual levels? How is content related to pedagogical profile? What identities and positions are formulated for children in relation to various contents and profiles? The empirical data in the study were gathered in 2008 and comprises text in the form of governing documents on different levels: as municipal guidelines, profile descriptions on the municipality’s websites and IDP forms. Tentative results show a variation with both similar and diverse constructions of contents and positions related to pedagogical profiles.

Regulated childhood : equivalence with variation

The overriding aim of this article is to make a contribution to the discussion on individual development plans (IDPs) in Sweden as an expression of a regulated childhood and institutional practice. Individual development plans are seen as a phenomenon linked to the emergence of an auditing society. In sum, children are studied as subjects in relation to content, form and assessment in the individual development plans. The IDP material was collected in October 2006 in three urban municipalities and one rural municipality in southern Sweden. The three urban municipalities comprised municipal areas that were ethnically relatively homogenous and heterogenous, respectively. The data consist of 82 randomly chosen plans for children in preschool and preschool classes, and the method is based on textual analysis. An overall picture of a multicontextual regulation of childhood and institutional practice gradually emerges. The analysis can be summarized in distinctive principal tracks, or normalities, marked by equivalence with variation