Environment as mediator - a discourse analysis of policy advice on physical environment in early childhood education

This article examines how environmental design is set in motion as a technique of government in Swedish policy texts issued to advise those who build and plan preschools. Drawing on Foucauldian research on governmentality and Carol Bacchis 'What's the problem Represented to be?' (WPR) approach, five Swedish government policies on how to build and design preschools are examined from a critical perspective. The WPR analysis helps identify how policies produce problems in certain ways and in this case shows how the preschool environment features in policies in accordance with a certain logic. The study shows that the environment is meant to function as a mediator for disciplinary power, to shape children's behaviors in desirable ways without coercion. The article also highlights certain silences in the material, the most prominent of these being the lack of discussion about adapting preschool environments to different needs without labeling children as disabled.