Education and care for the youngest children on scientific ground: Experiences from practice- and evidence-based research

The project’s overarching concern is education and care for the youngest children (0-7 yrs) on scientific ground; in Sweden legislated in the school law.

Compared to practices of medicine or nursing, the task has proven to be difficult: due to the lack of relevant evidence-based studies.

In pace with the developments of brain imaging techniques, cognitive psychologists have initiated bridging the gap between research on the embodied brain and education, but have mainly focussed on older children, or learning easy to measure, i.e. mathematics.

The youngest children’s socio-emotional development, care and learning have earned less attention, partly due to discontent and test-averseness in preschool and among educational researchers.

The aim is to provide a comprehensive scientific discussion on the possibilities and problems involved in performing practice- and evidence-based research on development, care and education for the youngest children (0-7 yrs) to be presented in the form of a monograph. Experiences from international and national practice- and evidence-based research is analysed and discussed.

This includes my experiences as a professor of Education, leading the first Swedish educational neuroscience research project in preschool with 432 children and 98 educators, involving brain-imaging techniques.

The contribution is knowledge about the conditions for practice- and evidence-based research for stakeholders and schools and for researchers planning future research.