Cross cultural perspectives on Swedish and Turkish ECEC
Välkommen till två seminarier med våra gästforskare på IPKL. Seminarierna anordnas av forskargruppen Global Childhoods och OMEP Sweden.
From Policy to Practice: How Diversity is Lived in Preschool Classrooms
In her speech, Dr. Öztürk will first introduce a brief history of the Turkish National Preschool Curriculum. Then, she will talk about how diversity is conceptualized and represented in the Swedish and Turkish national preschool curricula. She will then conclude her talk by mentioning the primary results of her current study, which explores how Swedish preschool classrooms represent diversity, especially in the classroom atmosphere and teachers’ daily practices.
Naciye Öztürk is a guest researcher in the Department of Education, Communication, and Learning at the University of Gothenburg. She earned her PhD in the Early Childhood Education Program at Hacettepe University as a Türkiye Council of Higher Education (CoHE) 100/2000 PhD Scholar. She has contributed to numerous national and international studies and projects on inclusive education and education for sustainability. Her research focuses on diversity, inclusion, home environments, and sustainability education in early childhood.
Transformative Early Learning with the 8Rs and PRECEC
In this presentation, dr Kahriman Pamuk share a collaborative sustainability project carried out in a preschool in Göteborg, Sweden, where she worked closely with teachers, families, and children aged 2–6. Together, they integrated the expanded 8Rs framework—Reduce, Reuse, Reconnect with Nature, Recycle, Redistribute, Respect, Reflect, and Rethink—with “what-if” thinking inspired by Play Responsive Early Childhood Education and Care (PRECEC) theory. By designing imaginative play scenarios and posing forward-thinking questions, we invited children to explore sustainability challenges creatively and critically. Their voices, actions, and reflections guided the process, resulting in transformative changes not only in their everyday behaviors but also in how families and the local community engaged with sustainability. In this session, Dr Kahriman Pamuk will present key outcomes, share children’s authentic perspectives, and reflect on how this approach can inspire future educational practice, demonstrating the powerful role of playful, participatory learning in shaping a more sustainable world. Further, she will present a comparison between the Turkish and Swedish preschool curricula in terms of sustainability, play, and child agency.
Dr Kahriman Pamuk is an associate professor at the Department of Early Childhood Education at Mersin University in Turkey. Her research and teaching have long focused on early childhood education for sustainability, nature-based learning, and curriculum development. Over the years, she has taken part in various national and international projects and professional development initiatives aiming to support teachers and promote sustainability in early education. Since August 2023, she has been working as a guest researcher at IPKL in Göteborg. In parallel, she collaborates with preschools to further develop Early Childhood Education for Sustainability practices by examining real-life examples and exploring their adaptation across diverse educational contexts. Her work seeks to bridge academic research with practical application, grounded in ongoing dialogue with children, families, and educators whose perspectives continually inform and enrich my understanding.