Tyngd, sväng och empatisk timing : förskollärares kroppsliga kunskaper

Sammanfattning: In what way is knowledge embodied and what role does embodied knowledge play in interpersonal professional practices? In this thesis, practical and embodied knowledge of preschool teachers is investigated as an example of a profession where relational and bodily situated knowledge is significant.The questions, from where my point of departure is taken, are for instance: How does a skilful preschool teacher act? What approach in terms of embodied knowledge is needed if one wants to give care, trust and offer a child a sense of we? Are there dimensions of embodied knowledge that are present only in situations that appear negative? This thesis belongs to the academic discipline The Theory of Practical Knowledge. Practical Knowledge in often described as experience based, bodily carried, situated and tied to our emotional life. The Theory of Practical knowledge tries to frame and explain these aspects of knowledge in the situations and contexts where they occur. The importance of embodied knowledge, as a form of practical knowledge in relation to preschool teachers professional development, is not a theme that has been scrutinized in other research. In the light of a presupposition that knowledge is bodily carried (a presupposition that is founded in experiences of dance and a phenomenological influenced theoretical base) and that practical wisdom and skill in interpersonal practices exists only in action, this thesis is built upon a concern regarding whether values embedded in these practises could be threatened as a result of the difficulty to grasp them. The forms of embodied knowledge possessed by the preschool teachers in this study appear as relational and situated in the co-embodied space in between the preschool teacher and the child, or, more correctly, between everyone in the group. In the interaction enabled by the good relationship the embodied forms of knowledge express themselves as mastery, a skill honed by care that I have chosen to describe using terms such as groove, weight, and empathetic timing.