The Provotype as a methodological exploration in educational research

Preschool, understood as being both a physical and psychological
environment, is, according to objectives in national curriculum, required
to be inclusive for all those who attend it. Previous studies have
identified the stereotypical norms of several everyday activities of
preschools, including both interactions and premises. The aim of this
article is to present and discuss a possible methodological idea of a
‘provotype’ as a model for re-representing empirical analysis based on
different data types that are combined in a research process. Research
concerning provotypes will be presented. The research method will be
presented in detail and the analytical process described. In the results
section, the provotype and its aspects will be presented. Both during
the work with the provotype as well as afterwards we have learned that
working with the  provotyping  (what we like to call the whole process
of analysing the results, visualizing, discussing the form of it and our
reactions to the provotype) involves several phases of exproration and
those phases includes uncertainty. A provotype might be a good way of
re-illustrating, or as we put it re-representing, results from case studies
with a number of different data, as in this study.