The shaping of preschool care in textbooks: tensions between ethics of care, system criticism, learning and neoliberal governing

This study scrutinises the shaping and discursive effects of care in preschool teacher education textbooks in Sweden. Drawing on a poststructural approach, regularities of description were analysed, deepening our understanding of how textbooks shape ideas about preschool care practices and preschool teacher professionalism, and how these processes are informed by dominant discourses operating in this field. The study shows how three dominant regularities emerge in the shaping of preschool care: how it is shaped as existing in its own right; how it is shaped through system criticism; and how it is shaped as a societal benefit, aligning with neoliberal views. The study shows how predominant discourses dictate the conditions for preschool care to be shaped, but it also shows possibilities for resistance.