The gap between juridical and pedagogical discourses concerning preventing and countering abusive treatment in preschool policy documents

ABSTRACT The basic idea of a Swedish preschool is that it is a place where children can learn and experience growth in a variety of areas, not least in the social area. According to the Education Act all preschools must annually document and evaluate planned work to prevent and remedy abusive treatment. The aim of this article is to analyse if and how the discursive gap between the juridical and pedagogical assignments given to preschools in national policy documents becomes visible in local policy plans concerning the prevention and remedy of abusive treatment. The empirical material consists of 89 documents. The result makes it clear that the juridical and pedagogical discourses contain a gap in local policy plans, making it unclear whether a juridical perspective or a pedagogical perspective on abusive treatment is to be used when preventing and remedying abusive treatment in practice.


Introduction
In Sweden, all children between the ages of one and five have the right to attend preschool, and just over 85% of all children do (National Agency for Education 2020). Since 1998, Swedish preschools have had their own national curricula. Additionally, the basic idea of Swedish preschools is to be a place where children can learn and experience growth in a variety of areas, not least in social areas (National Agency for Education 2018). One of the central assignments for preschools is to support children's social development and interaction with peers and to learn to interact with others by developing, for example, empathy, care, compassion, and respect.
When children play and interact, is it common for them to end up in conflict or dispute with one another. According to the preschool curriculum (National Agency for Education 2018), children should receive help and support from teachers 'to resolve conflicts, work out misunderstandings, compromise, and respect each other' (14).
In both national and international research, it is also made visible that children in preschool can be exposed to bullying and abusive treatment (e.g. Camodeca, Caravita, and Coppola 2015;Grindheim and Sadownik 2021;Helgeland and Lund 2017;Iraklis 2020;Kirves and Sajaniemi 2012;Repo and Sajaniemi 2015;Söderström and Hultman 2017). Previously, these conflicts were seen as a moral issue that was handled pedagogically (Colnerud 2014b;2014a), but now, there are regulations in both the Education Act (SFS 2010: 800) and the Discrimination Act (SFS 2008: 567) concerning how preschools should prevent and remedy abusive treatment. For example, what was previously seen as everyday conflicts between children and adolescents can now be interpreted as inappropriate behaviour that is illegal. These assignments, to help children manage conflicts and to prevent and remedy abusive treatment, require preschool teachers to be able to identify what are conflicts between children and what is abusive treatment. How preschool teachers deal with this is what we are interested in in this article.
The task to prevent and remedy abusive treatment should be performed, in accordance with the Education Act (SFS 2010: 800), as targeted work, and teachers 'or other staff who becomes aware that a child … considers that they have been subjected to abusive treatment in connection with the activity is obliged to report this to the head principal' (SFS 2010: 800, 6 ch. 10 §) who in turn should investigate the reports. In the National Agency for Education (National Agency for Education 2019a), supporting material states that all abusive treatment must be reported to the head principal without being evaluated.
Abusive treatment is defined in accordance with the Education Act as 'a behaviour which, without being discrimination under the Discrimination Act (2008: 567), violates the dignity of a child or a student' (SFS 2010:800; 6 ch. 3 §). Further, in a government bill, the government states that 'the actions or treatments shall be disadvantageous in the form of injury or discomfort' (Persson and Baylan 2005, 136). The preparatory work (Reinfeldt 2009) for the Education Act gives examples of what abusive treatment can be: It may include verbal statements about looks or behaviour that do not include any of the grounds for discriminationfor example, about obesity and hair colour. It can also be described as non-verbal, where, for example, a student attempts to 'push someone or pull someone by the hair or tripping another person by the leg' (Reinfeldt 2009, 693).
What determines whether an incident amongst peers in preschools should be regarded as abusive treatment or not is based on the 'individual's own experience' (Reinfeldt and Sabuni 2007, 95), meaning that the responsibility to interpret a social action is put on very young children. As a matter of fact, this issue is highlighted and discussed on a website by the National Agency for Education (2019b). Here, the agency 1 emphasises the importance of remembering 'that it can be difficult for a child or a student to convey their feelings of being abused. Younger children may have difficulty expressing their feelings in the same way as older children and adults'. There is, however, no official statement on how to deal with this, but it is up to the teachers themselves to assess, together with the child, whether they feel offended or not.
Although the state tries to define and exemplify the concept of abusive treatment, the scope for interpretation is large, entailing different understandings of the concept of abusive treatment, which affects how teachers can practically put this into work in the preschool context. Söderström and Hultman (2017) also argue that the prevailing understanding of abusive treatment is contextualised in schools, which makes it even more difficult to translate it into preschool activities. Young children have also been seen as incapable of performing such actions (Kirves and Sajaniemi 2012), which can affect how one can interpret and understand abusive treatment in preschools.
Governance documents and laws are clear on the teacher's responsibility to manage conflicts and prevent and remedy abusive treatment, but how they are to fulfil their assignments and how they should be able to distinguish whether a situation is perceived as abusive by young children or if it is a conflict between them is left entirely up to the principals, preschool teachers, and other educational staff to interpret and translate into local policy plans.
According to the Education Act (SFS 2010:800), all preschools (and other levels of education) must formulate an annual plan to prevent and remedy abusive treatment, and this work should also be evaluated annually. The content of these plans should act as support for teachers' practical work in how they should handle the task of preventing and remedy abusive treatment. It can be difficult to distinguish between concepts in this field and the boundaries can be blurred. Horton, Forsberg, and Thornberg (2022) writes that teachers in the school struggle with distinguishing degrading treatment, harassment, and school bullying. For these plans to act as support in practice, should they contain how preschool teachers should distinguish between abusive treatment and conflicts, which is then the basis for them to make to report the act or whether they should define it as a conflict that could be handled in the preschool where children should learn from the situation. Here, the latter is more in line with the preschool's tradition of working with ethical and moral problems together with the children (Dahlbeck 2014). To legalise social areas, that were previously handled mainly by pedagogical means, which is becoming more and more common, at least in the Nordic countries, can create problems. In terms of the fact that the reporting obligation takes time and resources but also in terms of confidence in teachers' professional practice (Colnerud 2014b). This can create a gap in the policy documents between a juridical and a pedagogical perspective. This could affect how well the plans can act as a support or not in the work to prevent and remedy abusive treatment.
The aim of this article is to analyse if and how the discursive gap between juridical and pedagogical assignments given to preschools in national policy documents becomes visible in local policy plans.
The following research question forms the basis of this study: . If and how do juridical and/or pedagogical discourses appear in local policy plans concerning the prevention and remedy of abusive treatment.
The result will be discussed in relation to how well the plans can act as support in the work to prevent and counteract children being abused in preschool.

Theoretical framework
In this article, policy enactment is used as a theoretical framework. Policy enactment is related to how policy texts are interpreted and transformed in practice (Ball, Maguire, and Braun 2012), and the practice, in this article, appears in the form of a local policy plan to prevent and remedy abusive treatment. According to Ball (2003), implementing policies does not happen as a linear process, and the process is affected by different norms and established routines. The mission to prevent and remedy abusive treatment is clear in policy in Sweden, it is a legal norm, but, as described earlier, there are no guidelines for how this should be implemented, nor how the teachers should be able to distinguish this task from other tasks such as helping the children to handle conflicts. As the assignment is left to practitioners to interpret and implement, it can be affected by a variety of discourses but in this article, we focus on different norms and routines linked to juridical and/or pedagogical discourse.
When it comes to judicial discourse, we use Ball's (1993) definition of policy discourse. He uses a broader definition of policy, in which he sees policy texts not only as texts but also as discourses. This means that other statements from state actors can also be seen as part of a policy discourse and then seen as policy texts in that these contribute to the exercise of power through 'a production of "truth" and "knowledge", as discourse' (Ball, 1993(Ball, , 2015. Ball (2008), who bases his theories on discourses by Foucault, believes that policy discourses emphasise 'certain ideas and topics and speakers and exclude others' (5). This means that 'policy discourses provide us with ways of thinking and talking about our institutional ourselves, to ourselves and to others' (Ball 2015, 307). Maguire et al. (2011) argue that policy discourses 'should not be considered in isolation; rather, they act upon and influence one another intertextually' (597). This means that the understanding of the assignment may vary. Policy texts often do not provide an answer to how the assignment should be performed (Ball 1993), which also applies to the assignment of prevent and remedy abusive treatment and subsequently teaching children.
When preschool teachers being mandated to interpret and handle incidents in judiciary terms means pedagogical modes of action may give way to judiciary interpretations of appropriate modes of action (Runesdotter 2016;2019). Runesdotter (2019) claims that when it comes to questions about abusive treatment, professional logic is thus limited because abusive treatment must be handled according to bureaucratic logic. Thus, there is a shift towards juridical logic, where the responsibility lies with legal decisionmakers (Brännström 2011). According to Bergh and Arneback (2016), does this have consequences: With this shift, the juridical concepts can lead to the relationships that arise in the school taking on a more instrumental character through the assessment and monitoring functions of the teaching profession. At the same time, we want to emphasise that it depends on how the juridical concepts are adopted by the school staff, that is, in what way they are filled with meaning (25). This means that the national juridical (or policy) discourses can influence the content of the plans, analysed in this article but this depends on how the preschool teachers relate to the legal norms and adopted the assignment and the concepts that go with this. In this article, we link content in the plans that can relate to legal norms such as legal texts, preparatory work formulated by the state or support documents from the national school board in the area of preventing and remedying abusive treatment to a juridical discourse.
When it comes to pedagogical discourses, this article focuses on preschool teaching to promote children's development and learning. There are many pedagogical discourses that affects how teaching is expressed in preschool, but teaching in preschools is often based on professional norms about how children learn and develop and 'is often given a broad meaning that involves following, stimulating and challenging children's development and learning' (Sheridan and Williams 2018, 21). Teaching techniques in preschool can be said to be shaped by the interaction between children and responsive preschool teachers (Tallberg Broman and Roth 2019). This broad view of teaching is also made visible in the preschool curriculum (National Agency for Education 2018). It emphasises the task of, based on the goals of the curriculum, stimulating and challenging the children in order to promote the children's development and learning. Children should learn both from each other and from their interactions with adults. The preschool's environment should also stimulate their development and learning. Content that we link to pedagogical discourse is thus descriptions that can relate to the preschool teachers' teaching assignments where the children are expected to develop and learn in different areas.
As described earlier, children's conflicts are seen as something that happens when children integrate with each other. Corsaro (2015), who focused on peer-cultures among pre-school children, describes that '[p]eer cultures are not always the picture of peace, joy, and community spirit, however. Young children argue, fight, push, kick, and sometimes even bite' (189). Frånberg and Wrethander (2011) also state that children are given the opportunity to face the value of respect for the integrity of others through conflicts. Corsaro (2015) claims that conflicts can be seen as learning opportunities for children. In conflicts, children can explore different positions, test boundaries, and process questions that are perceived as important to them. However, this is provided that the preschool teachers define the situation as a conflict. If they define the situation as a conflict, they can, within a pedagogical discourses, teach the children about conflicts and how they should deal with them. If, on the other hand, they identify the situation as abusive treatment, they must, according to law, report to the head principal without evaluating the situation, who in turn must investigate the incident.
To be able to identify and classify, it is necessary to specify the applicable characteristics, such as similarities and differences, which Jenkins (2000) thinks is done in relation to prevailing discourses applied in the knowledge area. Brännström (2011) states that juridical discourses have distinctive features in that they are based on legal sources, such as laws and previous case laws, and follow specific rules of the game, such as higher-level legal sources beating lower-level legal sources. As described earlier, there are no guidelines for how abusive treatment should be separated from conflict. Here it will be interesting to study whether preschool teachers make this distinction themselves in the plans that aim to prevent and remedy abusive treatment. Hence the focus is on whether the legal and pedagogical discourses in the plans relate to each other. The result is discussed in relation to how the plans can act as support in the work to prevent and remedy abusive treatment.

Methods
This study's aim and research questions are framed through qualitative methods (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2007). The focus of the study has been to analyse the plans, and this is done here by analysing 89 different plans against which has the purpose of prevent and remedy abusive treatment 2 from 89 Swedish municipalities, at least one municipality from every Swedish county except one. The geographical distribution of the preschools is presented below (Table 1). Something that also can affect the result is how many of the preschool teachers are certified, which is presented below (Table 2). In 11 cases, there is no information about whether the preschool teachers are licensed. For these, the information is not available because they are either not a municipal unit or the name on the plan does not match the names in the used database.
The data were collected through a criterion-based selection process by visiting the websites of all 290 municipalities in Sweden. The criteria were that each plan would be described as one meant for the preschool to prevent and remedy abusive treatment and that it is valid at the time of collection (Spring 2019). A scan was run, and the first five preschools' websites displayed for the municipality were visited.
The material was then first sorted based on juridical and pedagogical discourse, which is analysed inductively, with the help of NVivo, based on qualitative content analysis (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2007) with inspiration taken from visual text analysis (Björkvall 2012). Björkvall (2012), in fact, argues that this form of text analysis focuses on the importance of how words are placed in a sentence. In this article, the method is not used in detail. Instead, we searched inductively for content that could be linked to juridical and/or pedagogical discourses. As we describe in the theory section, we link juridical discourse to content that can relate to legal texts, preparatory work formulated by the state or support documents from the national school board in the area of preventing and remedying abusive treatment to a juridical discourse. Content that we link to pedagogical discourse are thus descriptions that can relate to the preschool teachers' teaching assignments where the children are expected to develop and learn in different areas.
All documents have been decoded, and no municipalities or individual preschools are named in the results. The study's reliability is achieved in several ways. The analysed material is openly available through municipalities' websites and does not require special authority. For ethical reasons, we chose not to print the names of preschools and municipalities, because it does not make a significant difference to the analysis and results of this study.

Results
The results of the analysis are presented on how juridical and/or pedagogical discourses appear in the local policy plans concerning the prevention and remedy of abusive treatment.
It starts with a section presenting how juridical discourses appear, followed by a section presenting how pedagogical discourses appear. The last section then discusses the discursive gap between these two discourses becoming visible. Juridical discourse in the plans The juridical discourse appears in all plans except for one which seems more aimed at children instead of the preschool teachers. For example, when the assignment of preventing and remedying abusive treatment is described is quotes or summaries used from legal texts and/or other supporting documents from the area. In the same way, juridical discourse also appears when abusive treatment is defined, described, and exemplified. For example, in many of the plans, the concept of abusive treatment is defined as an action that violates the principle of equal value for all. One of the plans states the following: Abusive treatment is a behaviour that violates a child's dignity, but which has no connection with any grounds for discrimination. Abusive treatment may be performed by one or more persons and directed at one or more persons. The abusive treatment can be visible and tangible as well as hidden and subtle. … It can occur occasionally or may be systematic and recurring. It can be expressed by teasing, bullying, starting rumours, ridiculing, ostracism, physical violence, being pushed, or pulling someone's hair. Both preschool teachers and children can be guilty of abusive treatment.
The text above is directly related to the law (SFS 2010, 800) and supporting document (DO 2012(DO , 2015. In another plan, it is explained that abusive treatment can be expressed physically, verbally, or psychosocially and based on text and images which also can be related to the supporting documents (DO 2012(DO , 2015. Many plans also provide examples of abusive treatment in these areas: Abusive treatment can be: physical (e.g. being hit or pushed), verbal (e.g. being threatened), psychosocial (e.g. being exposed to ostracism or rumour spreading) text-and image-borne (e.g. letters and notes, e-mail, SMS, MMS) The above example is totally in line with how abusive treatment is defined and described in policy texts (for example, SFS 2010, 800;DO 2012;. It is emphasised in most plans as well as in policy texts (Reinfeldt 2009) that it is the individual experience that must govern whether an act is to be classified as abusive treatment or not. In some plans, it is stated that the abuse must be noticeable and clear to be counted as abusive treatment. According to some plans, children must make it clear to the person who is abusing them that the behaviour is perceived as abusive treatment which can also be linked with the preparatory work for the Educational act (Persson and Baylan 2005).
Furthermore, as described in policy texts (National Agency for Education 2019b), some plans explain the following: The child or pupil can also take help from the teachers in the preschool. It is important to remember that younger children do not always can convey their feelings in the same way as older children and adults.
The juridical discourse also appears in the plans when the responsibility to report discovered abusive treatment to the head principal is described. In many of the plans, it is stated that preschool teachers must report abusive treatments that is detected, which is also described in the Educational act (SFS 2010, 800) and some plans state that this must be reported without being evaluated which also National Agency for Education (2019a) describes. The following is an example of this: If a child is subjected to abusive treatment in preschool, the teacher is obliged to report this to the head principal. The head principal is then obliged to promptly investigate the circumstances report.
Some of the plans instead state that the preschool teachers must document, inform the principal and/or the guardians, which is not in accordance with the law.
In summary, the analysis makes it clear that the juridical discourse appears in the plans when the assignment to prevent and remedy abusive treatment is described and when the concept of abusive treatment is defined, described, and exemplified and when routines are described. That it is the individual experience that should govern whether an act is to be classified as abusive treatment or not is also clear, but how teachers should be able to determine whether children experience acts as abuse is not described.

Pedagogical discourse in the plans
The pedagogical discourse also appears in almost all plans except for six plans. This discourse appears in the plans in descriptions of how teachers should prevent and remedy abusive treatment. The teachers are described in the plans as being able to prevent abusive treatment by being present among the children. They can be responsive and have an overview of all children in play and social interactions, which also could apply to prevent and remedy conflicts as stated in some plans. The plans also state that the preschool teachers should act as good role models, offer support if the children end up in conflict, and provide them with solutions and tools to solve problems that arise. An example of this is as follows: We teachers are good examples of how we adults are towards each other and to the children. The attitude of the teachers and how we are towards each other is reflected in the children's group.
The teachers should take every opportunity where the children end up in conflicts or abuse others as an opportunity to give the children tools to deal with similar events in the future.
The examples above show how teaching can be embedded in adults' actions but in everyday situations, such as conflicts.
The pedagogical discourse also appears when they describe how they should organise activities. To be able to listen to the children and be responsive should teachers divide them into smaller groups by age or interests. Some plans describe how teachers have or plan conversations with children in various forms, with some teachers using both organised and/or spontaneous conversations. This conversations are about, for example, how to act towards each other, and how to be a 'good friend'. Some plans assert that his work is for the purpose to prevent and remedy abusive treatment while others imply that is it conflicts that are to be prevented and remedied.
Other concrete activities included in the plans are that teachers should use various books, stories, and dramas to prevent abusive treatment or conflicts. For the same purpose, adults should use different forms of trust, valuation and collaboration exercises.
The pedagogical discourse also becomes visible in the plans regarding what children need to learn and develop to prevent and remedy abusive treatment in preschools. The plans posit that children need to not only learn to deal with conflicts that may lead to abusive treatment but also use, for example, acceptable language, develop empathy, accept differences, respect others, and gain an understanding of their own and others' actions, rights, obligations, and responsibilities. They also assert that children should learn to act as a 'good friend'. An example of the latter is taken from a document describing how teachers should work to prevent abusive treatment but which aims for the children to learn and develop: Daily discussions on how to be a good friend. The children have been given a map of friends and what to do if they go crazy. Important to learn to say sorry.
The analysis also shows that children should learn to dare to inform adults if they feel illtreated, put their emotions into words, and receive tools to handle similar situations in the future. The following excerpt is an example of this: In a conflict, we help the children to put their feelings into words and describe what is happening, we strive to give the children tools and strategies to solve the conflicts themselves in the future.
This example shows how teaching can be embedded in a conflict situation for the children to learn for the future.
In summary, the analysis makes it clear that the pedagogical discourse is visible in descriptions of how teachers should prevent and remedy abusive treatment, but in some plans, abusive treatment is replaced by references to conflicts that are to be prevented and/or remedied. Even though it is described in routines that the preschool teachers must report if they discover abusive treatment, no plan describes that they made a report. In the few plans where it is described that they have detected abusive treatment, it is instead described that the teachers have talked to or mediated with the children, which can instead be linked to a pedagogical discourse.
Abusive treatment based in a juridical or pedagogical discoursea gap and boundaries The analyses above show that both juridical and pedagogical discourses appear in the plans. It is visible in all plans, except one, that abusive treatment must be prevented and remedied. This becomes primarily visible in descriptions of the assignment, when the concept of abusive treatment is defined, described, and exemplified and when routines are described. This can be linked to juridical discourse. What is to be prevented and remedied in practice in children's play and social interactions is instead linked to a pedagogical discourse which focuses more on helping and supporting children to deal with the situation rather than dealing with it as a juridical issue. Sometimes, the content of the plans is about abusive treatment and sometimes about conflicts. However, the methods in practice are still related to a pedagogical discourse.
The documents, which describe remedial work as sharing a strong connection with juridical discourse, recommend that abusive treatment be reported. As described earlier, many plans say that abusive treatment can be performed physically, verbally, and psychosocially, as well as through text and images, which is an idea derived from a juridical discourse (for example DO 2012;. Examples of these areas, such as physically abusive treatment where children are being hit or pushed, are also derived from juridical discourse. However, this action is also described by some plans as conflict. Hellman (2010) states that children can be said to be in conflict when they act out, are in a tangible fight, and/or push other children around. Another example is that in juridical discourse, psychosocial abusive treatment is described as being exposed to ostracism, which, according to Corsaro (2015), is something children do to explore different positions and test boundaries. This gap between the juridical and pedagogical discourse is not something that is directly discussed in the plans, with the exception of a few, which do so very briefly.
These few plans show uncertainty about the differences between abusive treatment and conflict. The following is an example: There is still some uncertainty among the teachers as to what limit applies for abusive treatment versus a conflict, and the teacher for continuous conversations about this.
Some other plans present the possibility that conflicts can result in or show abusive treatment without providing further descriptions of when a conflict becomes abuse and what differentiates the two. For example, Teachers have observed and […] discover places and situations where conflicts arise between the children that can lead to abusive treatment.
A few plans draw a distinction between abusive treatment and conflict. For example, one plan claims abusive treatment originates from having a sense of power and conflicts roughly occur between equally strong parties and may involve material or value issues. However, how they are essentially separated or handled is not described in this plan. Even when it comes to whether an incident should be reported as being one of abuse, a few plans declare that there is a boundary between abuse and conflicts. One plan claims that this limit is in situations that cannot be resolved in preschools. In other plans, individual abuse and/or minor conflicts are investigated directly with those involved, while other plans report the following: In the event of serious or repeated conflicts, the relevant custodian and preschool head are informed about the action plan and follow-up.
These boundaries between conflicts and abusive treatment, or the question of what should be reported or not, mean that teachers need to know if the parties involved are equally strong parties, if the incidents are occurring occasionally or repetitively, and if the situation is serious. This gives rise to the need to clearly define these concepts in the plans so that boundaries can be drawn between conflicts and abusive treatment. Furthermore, these clear definitions can also help make the exact handling method or style of response clear to children, teachers, and guardians.
When it comes to classifying an act as abusive, the plans state that individual experience governs the final judgement. This is in accordance with juridical discourse. However, how teachers should judge an act as abusive is not described in accordance with neither of the juridical or pedagogical discourse. Iraklis (2020) claims it is important for teachers to be able to identify such behaviours, as it is not always clear whether children intentionally show aggressive behaviour, which is one of the criteria for an act to be a matter of abuse (Persson and Baylan 2005). Children also have a more one-dimensional way of defining actsfor example, bullying (Monks and Smith 2006) which can also make it difficult for them to understand or explain whether they feel abused or not.
In summary, the results make it clear that both juridical and pedagogical discourses appear and are visible in the plans, but the latter seems to take precedence when describing how to deal with abusive treatment. The gap between these discourses is not overcome in the plans, and they seem to appear as separate entities in them without a clear connection.

Discussion
This article analyses if and how the discursive gap becomes visible between the juridical, based on legal norms, and pedagogical assignments, based on professional norms, given to preschools in national policy documents on the prevention and remedy of abusive treatment in preschools. According to Runesdotter (2016;2019), pedagogical methods may give way to juridical ones, which does not appear to be the case in the plans forming the basis of the results in this article. Rather, the opposite appears to hold true. This may be because the basic idea of preschools is that they are places where children should be able to grow and learn. The fact that the concept of abusive treatment is contextualised in schools (Söderström and Hultman 2017), where students may find it easier to express whether they feel abused, may lead a pedagogical discourse to be emphasised more clearly than a juridical one.
What is visible in the results, however, is the gap between the juridical and pedagogical discourses. Instead of being combined in a fruitful way, they seem to exist side by side. When the assignment is described, a juridical discourse is brought into play, but when the question of how to prevent and deal with abusive treatment is explored, a pedagogical discourse is utilised without being connected with a juridical discourse. In most documents, there is no discussion on how juridical concepts should be understood in the context of preschools. For example, in most documents, no discussion can be found on what abusive treatment can be in preschool activities, how teachers can judge when a child feels abused, and what distinguishes abusive treatment from conflicts. This affects how these documents can act as supporting material for teachers in terms of how they can handle such situations in preschools. What amounts to abusive treatment in preschools is a question that is thus left to individual teachers to answer; it cannot be seen as a collective matter. By extension, this contributes to the idea that individual teachers can make subjective assessments about abusive treatment, which poses the risk of affecting children. For example, can this result in teachers claiming without reflection that some children are victims and others are perpetrators.
We, thus, see that a practical implication is a great need to contextualise juridical concepts in preschools so that the local policy documents can be framed in a supportive fashion for teachers. It is imperative for the documents to demonstrate to them how they can handle a complicated situation, such as one with abusive treatment.
Notes 2. These documents contain both plans for how the work to prevent and remedy abusive treatment should be performed as well as an evaluation of how previous years' work has gone. These documents will from now on be called plans.