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What is your PhD project about?

In my PhD project, I investigate which competencies educators use when developing science-pedagogical play and learning environments in daycare. I examine how they utilize their expertise, science capital, and personality, and whether they employ specific science-based competencies. I also explore the significance of the institutional and organizational frameworks that enable educators to develop precisely such environments. So, it is both a study of what educators specifically do and experience, and of how management - as well as, for instance, municipalities - can support the development of science pedagogical play and learning environments.

The project is part of a larger research initiative, the NAVADA project, which is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. NAVADA stands for 鈥淪cientific Literacy in Early Childhood Education鈥� and is based at University College Copenhagen. It is probably one of the largest research efforts in early childhood education in Denmark (read more about the Navada project here: https://navada.dk).

Why did you decide to pursue a PhD?

I have always had an interest in research, and for more than ten years I have participated in national and Nordic research and development projects within nature, outdoor life, science and sustainability. This has given me extensive knowledge and interest in the field. When I received the Novo Nordisk Foundation's Science Teacher Award in 2021, I realized that my perspective on daycare pedagogy should perhaps be further developed. There is a lot of exciting work happening within science in daycare these years, but there is still a lack of knowledge and understanding of how educators engage with science, and what they specifically experience and need in their work. I would also like to contribute to raising awareness that science pedagogy, in particular, can do something very special, not only in connection with children's scientific knowledge and understanding, but also as a general educational approach to the competent child, where curious adults facilitate the child's natural curiosity and desire to explore the world.

After teaching pedagogy students about nature, outdoor life, science, and sustainability for over 25 years, I have seen how challenging it can be for them to work with science in the beginning. I therefore have a deep interest in the field and want to shed light on what science competence is for pedagogues and how we can support their opportunities to create science environments for children. Furthermore, we still have very little Danish research in this area, and I hope to change that.

What did you do before?

I am actually a geologist from the University of Copenhagen and have written a thesis on iron-titanium oxides in the Sk忙rgaard intrusion in East Greenland, which must be said to be far from what I am working on now. Right after my master's degree, I became a research fellow at the Nordic Volcanological Institute in Reykjavik, where I researched volcanic gases from the Hengill volcano. I have a hardcore natural science education, where emotional aspects are of no importance, and I am trained in the fact that natural science is objective. I collected rock samples in situ in the field and analyzed them in different laboratories with different analysis techniques, and my conclusions were generated on the basis of field observations and the chemical data. It is a completely different scientific theoretical tradition that I come from than the one I move within in my PhD project, where I collect my empirical data via ethnographic fieldwork, for example.

When I was looking for work after my time in Iceland, a friend of mine encouraged me to apply for a position at a pedagogical seminary where they were looking for a science teacher. Since geology is a broad science discipline that I could use in teaching, I thought it might be something for me, because I probably missed getting the human aspect more into play. I quickly became hooked on teaching, and it was super inspiring and challenging to have to teach adults who had chosen an education that they were passionate about.

What did you dream of becoming as a child?

The funny thing is that as a child and young person, I actually wanted to be a teacher and work with children who were having a hard time. And I would have loved to work in a children's village, where a local community's childcare institutions have been brought together under one roof. I was so sure of my case that I also did a week of work experience in the Montessori kindergarten where I myself went as a child.

And why didn't I just go in that direction back then? Yes, that's a good question. But I think I ended up choosing geology because I knew about it through my mother, who was a Norwegian geologist and head of the trace element laboratory at the Geological Department at the University of Copenhagen, and my father, who was a chemist at the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland and was in charge of the chemistry laboratory there. So I've probably been quite influenced by the environment - and as a child I often went with my mother on fieldwork in Norway and collected rocks, which I thought was really fun. There was probably also an expectation in the family that I would pursue an academic education, so it was natural for me to follow that path.

When we talk about it, I also think of a situation in the kindergarten where I was doing my internship, which made a huge impression on me, and which may have influenced how I later met my students.

A little girl came up to me with tears in her eyes and showed me a piece of paper on which she had written the word 'lake' many times in fine cursive. She had then colored a lake with a pencil, but according to the educator who had given her the assignment, she had done it completely wrong. She had colored the lake jet black and not blue, and then she had to write it all over again.

It made a big impression on me, both because a forest lake can actually easily appear black, but also because it was not at all like seeing the child, and it may have ruined her joy in writing letters. I remember thinking that it was completely wrong, and that I shouldn't be an educator like this. My heart really hurt.

When I look back on it, it's quite interesting that I ended up taking a science degree, which I subsequently used in my teacher education to train educators in science pedagogy. And now I'm in a research project where I'm lucky enough to be allowed to investigate how educators and children work with science. So it all comes together in the end, anyway.

How do you think your PhD project can impact our society?

 My project can change the pedagogy in daycare through the science-pedagogical method and by promoting a science attitude among the educators. Educators who work with a science-pedagogical approach incorporate the child's perspective into their everyday life and their pedagogy in a very special way. This means that the educators develop a pedagogically professional, curious approach to children's curiosity. By following the children's attention and incorporating their ideas and investigations into everyday life, we create inclusion, equality and learning environments that the children help to create and want to be in. If children's curiosity is taken seriously, and they are seen and heard, they will gain a stronger sense of self, which can have a very positive impact on their future learning and development. This gives us democratic, critically reflective, independent and perhaps courageous citizens who will be better equipped to solve some of the problems the world faces now and in the future.

What is the international relevance of your research?

My research has a role to play in an international context, because there is a lack of knowledge about what science competence is for educators in day care. Much of the international research in the field describes what educators do or do not do, but does not examine what science competence is for educators. For me, it is important that educators gain self-confidence and courage and experience that they can actually use their science capital and their education, and do not need extensive knowledge of science as a starting point. I believe that my hypothesis that science pedagogy is not difficult 鈥� that you have to be curious about children's curiosity and be able to grasp the "scientific now" 鈥� may well gain international resonance.

I use Illeris' concept of competence, which is very holistic, to nuance and develop the understanding of what science competence in day care is. I have chosen Illeris because his definition of competence correlates with the preliminary analyses I have conducted on my empirical material. Illeris defines a concept of competence that consists of many different competence elements, such as empathy, flexibility and imagination in addition to the more traditional ones such as knowledge and skills.

Another important aspect is to change the perception of mistakes. In science pedagogy, you don't make mistakes; you gain experiences that make you wiser. It's about giving children self-confidence and the competence to act and the courage to find answers to their own questions. Science is constantly developing, and our understanding of what is true and false changes over time.

If we don't take young children's questions seriously, we undermine their creative approach to investigating the world around them, and we unlearn their vital curiosity and desire to know already in daycare. It is important to see children's ways of doing things as right and exciting regardless of form, and it is our task as adults to learn from them. With more knowledge in the area, we can better construct frameworks for and facilitate children's learning processes through open, productive questions that can be answered with the children's own investigations and challenge and disrupt them further. I usually say that science education is the only field where there is an equal relationship between children and adults. Children ask questions that adults no longer have the courage and imagination to ask or have forgotten to ask. Adults can learn a lot from children's approach to the world.

I hope that my research can inspire a more holistic and curiosity-based approach to science at children's level, both in the Nordic countries and internationally. And perhaps most importantly: to cherish the child's inherent curiosity - so that it may develop into a driving force for creative, imaginative, innovative and competent adults.