Hope for a good life - The children's and the pedagogical staff's collective drive for well-being in everyday life in ECEC.

In this presentation I will argue that well-being in ECEC can be understood as a shared striving fora good life, between children and staff, and that this must be understood in relation to the institutional context - the working life. As such, it is a social orientation shared, challenged and pursued personally by the children and the staff in everyday life. Being with other, participation and opportunity to decide for oneself appears important for well-being in everyday life. The daily creation of meaning of children and adults is the desire and hope for a good day, with no disasters, mega free and fun adults, and time and opportunity to be together. This joint effort is being challenged however, by an alienated work life, that tends to reduce the pedagogical work to a matter of making the day work and avoiding disasters.

A way to search for hope and desire in pedagogical work (and in education in general) is supported by the
methodology of critical-utopian action research (CUAR). It opens up to the explicitness of dreams and for
initiatives to realize wishes for a good life. The work with the methodology of CUAR made it possible for
me to see that the desire for a good life is a common desire of children and pedagogical staff.
This presentation draws from findings from a research project (Lind 2019) with the thesis: In which ways
does well-being unfold between children and the pedagogical staff in ECEC, and what barriers and
potentials for well-being can be identified in the ECEC institution's everyday life?. In this, well-being is
understood as the collective life of subjects, as well as in relation to the structures and societal
dynamics which surround it. The research project aligns with a critical and normative research tradition,
and scientific and methodologically it draws from Phenomenology of the Body with reference to Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (1994), and his theory of embodiment, as well as on critical theory with reference to the
social philosopher Agnes Heller’s (2016) Everyday life Theory, and Hartmut Rosa’s (2014; 2017)
identification of alienation processes due to the societal dynamics of the late modern society, as well as his
concept of resonance. It combines fieldwork (Arenkiel et al. 2012) with critical-utopian action workshops
(Nielsen & Nielsen 2007; Duus et al. 2014)