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This study aims to investigate which discourses appear as elements of ‘regimes of truth’ when preschool teachers in Sweden talk about science teaching and preschool children as well as how they through their talk contribute to fabricate the idea of the desirable child in early science. It is important to investigate how science and preschool children are being talked about to identify different ‘regimes of truth’ which can be seen as self-evident and taken for granted but still needs to be problematized and discussed. By studying a ‘regime of truth’ it is possible to perceive a series of existent truths in society and thus identify larger trends.

As the theoretical grounding for this study, I use Foucault’s notion on discourse, power and ‘regimes of truth’ as well as Popkewitz notion of fabrication and cosmopolitism as analytical tools to study preschool teachers’ narratives of early childhood science in Sweden.

For this purpose, I have conducted qualitative interviews with nine preschool teachers in Sweden in order to investigate how they talk about and interpret the curriculum objectives for science. To analyze and interpret the data collected I used discourse analysis.

The analysis shed light on how preschool teachers tend to fabricate science education in preschool as well as the idea of the desirable child in early science. I highlight what the preschool teachers express as a ‘truths’, both regarding early science as well as the preschool child. Early science education appears as a ‘regime of truth’ where rational and scientific learning is emphasized. It is rational in being concentrated around children’s learning of scientific facts and conceptual meanings as well as the constant searching for knowledge. The fabrication of early science is closely linked to the notion of the preschool child in early science. Three notable discourses were discovered in the preschool teachers’ speech on teaching science in preschool; an interest-discourse, a learning-discourse and a sustainability-discourse. When analyzing how the preschool teachers talked about the children, two prominent discourses were found: the child as a lifelong learner as well as the competent child.