Focusing on children's play, the present article explores how 3-to 6year-old children (re)produce, (re)negotiate and challenge heteronormativity in a Swedish Early Childhood Education setting. The article is based on ethnographic data, focusing on (re)production of heteronormativity in a particular kind of idealized, often feminine-coded and peer-group play with a low degree of teacher participation, labelled 'Mum, Dad, Child play' by the children. Our results show that children's play is structured by certain themes, such as family and home, and certain gendered and/or age-coded positions, such as mother, father, child or baby. Age difference (child/adult) proves to be the cornerstone of the heteronormative family metaphor of the play, where the child/ baby position is central. To describe the intersections of age, gender and sexuality in our analysis, we suggest the use of the concept of age-coded heteronormativity.

This article explores how life schedules and life courses that are organized chronologically become part of normalized heterosexuality in children’s conversations and play. The analysis draws on ethnographic data from a Swedish preschool, focusing on situations where children engage with themes such as romantic love, kisses and weddings. Queer temporal perspectives are applied to challenge how normativity and norm-challenging are perceived, not least in relation to how desirable futures for children are displayed. The article shows that children engage with love discourses in ways that both reproduce and challenge heteronormativity and linear temporalities in normative life course and life schedules.

I denna artikel undersöks hur studenter på förskollärarutbildningen vid Göteborgs universitet beskriver sina förväntningar på och upplevelser av den akademiska utbildningen. Med bakgrund i skrivningar och riktlinjer kring breddad rekrytering och breddat deltagande är frågan om akademisk kultur och akademiskt innanförskap aktuell, mer sällan har dock ett studentperspektiv beaktats. Förskollärarprogrammet är en av de utbildningar där studenter kommer från studieovana hem, vilket innebär att de utgör en underrepresenterad grupp sett till hela sektorn högre utbildning. Artikeln bygger på en mindre intervjustudie med sju studenter som vid tillfället läste sin sista termin på förskollärarutbildningen. Resultaten visar att studenterna har haft yrkets praktiska delar som sin utgångspunkt vid valet till förskollärare och inte förväntat sig en så teoretisk utbildning. Studenterna beskriver de moment i utbildningen som förutsätter akademisk litteracitet, såsom att läsa vetenskaplig text och skriva akademiskt, som utmanande. Vidare beskriver studenterna att kraven från utbildningens sida är otydliga och skiljer sig åt mellan kurser. Studenterna positionerar sig främst som praktiker, både i relation till yrket och till utbildningen som förskollärare. ENGLISH ABSTRACT “I have better practical skills.” Pre-school teacher students’ perspective on the academic education This article examines how students in preschool teacher education at the University of Gothenburg describe their expectations and experiences of academic education. Based on guidelines and policies concerning widening recruitment and widening participation the question of academic culture and academic inclusion is relevant. However, in this respect, a student perspective has more rarely been considered. The preschool teacher education is one of the educations where the student group comes from homes unaccustomed to studying, which means that they are an under-represented group in relation to the entire higher education sector. The article is based on a small interview study with seven students who were currently studying their last semester of preschool teacher education. The results show that the students have had the practical parts of the profession as their starting point in the choice of becoming preschool teachers and did not expect such a theoretical education. The students describe the parts of the education that require academic literacy, such as reading scientific text and writing academically, as challenging. Furthermore, the students describe that the requirements from the education are unclear and differ between courses. The students position themselves primarily as practitioners, both in relation to the profession and to the education as preschool teachers.

The present article explores how situated queerness takes place in relation to the construction of child and childhood. Lee Edelman (2004) argues that the child is opposed to, and in need of protection from contact with, homosexuality, which means that the queer cannot be part of the political fantasies of the future in which the child is central. In view of this, but unlike Edelman, I argue in this article that the child is part of different future fantasies, where the child is not necessarily separated from queerness. Here, I present contemporary connections between the child and queerness and analyze how possibilities and limitations appear in relation to this. Through two case studies, the article takes on a multi-sited approach (Marcus 1995), following when queerness is introduced on arenas where childhood is constructed. The first case is located to a preschool where the staff recently carried out hbtq-education and -certification and the analyzed data is one group interview with five preschool teachers and their principle. The second case is located in social media and consists of reactions on the presence of lesbian characters in the children’s comic Bamse, where 326 commentary posts around this topic are analyzed. Based on critical perspectives on age and sexuality, this article discuss what normalizations about childhood and heterosexuality are being made, and how these normalizations condition how queer sexuality can be present within the two childhood arenas represented in the material. Conclusions drawn are that both in the preschool and in the adults’ reactions to children’s culture, heterosexuality passes unnoticed, while queerness is made something remarkable. The relationship between queer and childhood can here be understood as both requested and questioned, which I present as conditioned queerness, and the child and childhood as spaces where different discourses about the child’s best and desirable future are negotiated.