Artikeln belyser bedömning i förskolors dokumentation som fenomen, begrepp och reglering. Syftet är att beskriva och analysera bedömning i förskolors dokumentation ur ett didaktiskt perspektiv. Ett specifikt syfte är att analysera hur olika bedömningsformer kan tolkas vara teoretiskt baserade och relaterade till reglering av förskola i Sverige. Med didaktik avses en kritisk och integrativ didaktik som strävar efter att ge stöd för kritiskt tänkande genom alternativa redskap. Materialet som analy¬seras utgör exempel hämtade från tre förskolor i södra Sverige. Generering av materialet gjordes i två kommuner 2011 och består av både dokument och intervjuer av förskollärare och förskolechefer. Analys och tolkning utfördes i termer av en abduktiv analysprocess. Resultatet visar att varje förskola kan arbeta med olika dokumentations- och bedömningsformer med skiftande relation till reglering som kan fångas och prövas genom det alternativa begreppet transformativ bedömning.

Professionals need to identify and justify their judgements and choices of documentation tools and critically reflect on the knowledge base of assessments. In this context, the paper provide a basis for critical reflection about assessment in the preschool documentation. Professional judgement can be said to be scientifically based, related to the proven experience and linked to regulation and policy documents, including Education Act and curricula. All together assessment is seen to be woven into the documentation and on the one hand it can support and reinforce, on the other hand it can weaken and mislead the various stakeholders, including teachers, parents and children. In conclusion, the article highlights the assessment in preschool documentation as phenomena, concept and control. The aim is to describe and analyse assessment in preschool documentation from a ‘didaktik’ perspective (see didaktik below). A specific aim is to analyse how different forms of assessment can be interpreted to be theoretically based and related to the regulation of preschool in Sweden. In this paper ‘didaktik’ means a critical integrative didaktik that strives to provide support for critical reflection through alternative tools and concepts. The formulated questions are: What forms of assessment can appear in preschool documentation and how can different forms of assessment be interpreted to be theoretically based and related to the regulation of preschool in Sweden? What assessment concept can be traced and formulated as alternative in relation to preschool in Sweden? Didaktik refers to a Continental (European) approach that emphasises the reflective processes of ‘Bildung’.. Bildung-processes may be about preparing individuals for an open future. Assessment has often been discussed from the perspective of didactics, that is, from the Anglo-Saxon tradition that tends to focus on methods, instructions and learning outcomes. In this paper, a different view of assessment is employed; assessment and documentation in preschool is considered from the perspective of didaktik. The didaktik approach can be described as a critical, continental didaktik. The letter K in didaktik, instead of C in didactics, represents the continental approach. The analysed material represents examples taken from three preschools in southern Sweden. The material was generated from two municipalities in 2011 and consists of both documents and interviews of preschool teachers and preschool heads. Analysis and interpretation were performed in terms of an abductive analysis process. The result shows that each preschool can work with various documentation tools and assessment forms with shifting relationship to regulation that can be summarized in the alternative concept of ‘transformative assessment’. Summative and formative assessments are concepts developed in accordance with goals to achieve, knowledge requirements and learning outcomes with the focus on both the individual and the classroom level. These concepts are not developed with a focus on preschool activity, a policy design with goals to strive for, hence without specified objects of achievement and learning outcomes at an individual level. Preschoolers should not be assessed based on established standards nor should they be compared to anyone but themselves. Hence, the concepts summative and formative are not fully viable in the preschool setting. Transformative assessment is a concept focusing on reshaping and interplaying assessments that are intertwined in the registration and complex documentation practices in preschools. Varying ways to record, whether it is written or in the form of photos, videos or symbols, shape and reshape different versions of reality as an expression of power. All assessments intertwined in documentation are formed from certain positions, interests and perspectives, and they influence how reality is constructed and enacted. Transformative assessment may interact between different theoretical positions and assemblies, including influences from psychological, variation theory, socio-cultural, market-economy (goal-result-quality), neuroscience and post-human approaches. Transformative assessment may be seen as reshaping and interplaying assessment in motion between different actors, forms, contents, and functions. The assessment moves between different levels (micro-macro) in complex networks. Hence, the concept of transformative assessment can articulate and conceptually capture the transforming interaction between different forms of documentation and assessment; between assessments with different theoretical basis including developmental-psychological assessments, knowledge assessments, personal assessments, self-assessments, narrative assessments and centre-performance-focused assessments. The concept can also be examined in relation to how to transform assessment at the individual level (how children’s skills change in target areas) into goals and assessments for the preschool-activity and centre performance (what needs to change for the child to be challenged and to further develop in the direction of curriculum goals to be strived upon). The revised preschool curriculum states that documentation and analysis should include how the skills and abilities of the child continuously change in target areas in relation to the conditions for development and learning that the preschool provides. Further, transformative assessment is enacted in socio-material co-actions in between linear (goal-directed actions) and non-linear and affirmative actions. The non-linear transformative assessment may refer to Osberg and Biesta (2010): “We should not try to judge what emerges before it has taken place or specify what should arrive before it arrives. We should let it arrive first, and then engage in judgement so as not to foreclose the possibilities of anything worthwhile to emerge that could not have been foreseen (p 603)”. So, transformative assessment may be seen as a movement between the linear that is retrospective (signs of learning oriented towards the past, the planned and goal-oriented learning and what is already known, or when the intention of the educational intervention is pre-defined), and the non-linear (oriented towards a future that cannot yet be foreseen, a complex and open-ended understanding of process). Transformative assessment “could then be understood to guide learning and creating by ‘expanding the space of the possible and creating the conditions for the emergence of the as-yet unimagined’ (cf. Osberg & Biesta, 2010, p 603). Finally, the concept of transformative assessment does not relate to a prescriptive concept (a prescribed ideal), but rather a descriptive and reflexive concept, which is an alternative concept that can offer support for thinking critically in a complex documentation and assessment approach. The concept needs to be further studied.