Everyday practice at the Sunflower: the staff's representations and governing strategies as contributions to the order of discourse

Abstract

Swedish leisure-time centres were formerly part of Swedish social and family policies but were transferred to an educational context in the 1990s. This transfer was accentuated by both the Education Act of 2010 and the new teacher training established in 2011, which also included education particularly directed for leisure-time centres. The state's intention with this discursive shift was to highlight education and learning within the activity in a more distinct way. This article is based on an ethnography-inspired study at one leisure-time centre called the Sunflower. The data are based on six weeks of field work including participating observations, field notes and walk-andtalk conversations. The study takes its point of departure from representations by staff concerning what they emphasise regarding the centre's activity, how these representations are related to each other and which strategies staff members use when talking about and monitoring the pupils' activities. The results show the strong presence of older traditions concerning values and practices regarding the performance at work: supporting children with good care, stressing the importance of children's free play and using a peripheral subject position during work. The results also show that a stress on the child-to-staff ratio as circumscribing the activity which is enhanced by the pupils misallocated age distribution.

Promoting social learning in the Swedish leisure time centre

“…The staff declare social learning as a topic that is not required to be discussed, and explain their opinion with the idea that their shared values guide the work. Maybe this view, on the one hand, can be explained by the results reported in previous research (Haglund, 2015;Palsdóttir, 2014), showing that teachers explained social learning as informal and as a by-product of the interaction between pupils. On the other hand, in the light of the staff's view of continuous dialogue as important when working with the pupils, this appears to be a surprising contradiction.…”

“…By focusing on the pupils' individual choice of activities, new peer constellations are created among them. Haglund (2015) highlights the staff's efforts to ensure pupils' well-being as a basic concern, with the emphasis on free play, that is to say play initiated by pupils, which is considered by the staff to provide learning opportunities through natural interaction. Similarly, Palsdóttir (2014) describes the staff's emphasis on pupils' interaction in social activities and their actively participating in the peer group as important.…”

“…Thereby, they also affect the opportunities for pupils' social learning and how social learning is promoted in the LTC. However, research (Haglund, 2015;Palsdóttir, 2014) shows that although the staff consider social learning and development as important aspects of leisure time activities, social learning is emphasised as being informal, and therefore good relations and social learning are not planned for. Neither do staff regard themselves as crucial for activating learning processes; rather, they situate themselves on the periphery of pupils' activities, neither participating in them nor conducting them.…”

“…Thus, the educational content regarding social learning should be didactically conscious and rooted in the curriculum, like any educational content. However, results from previous research (Haglund, 2015;Pálsdottír, 2014) indicate that pupils' social learning is supposed to "happen by itself" and that teachers have difficulties incorporating curricular goals concerning social learning in a didactic and conscious way (Lager, 2015). Thus, it is important to explore how staff in LTCs experience the conditions provided for pupils' social learning.…”

”Var ska jag vara då?”

“…Några av de nämnda studierna tar upp samverkan ur ett lärarperspektiv (Davidsson, 2002;Dockett och Perry, 2016;Haglund, 2015;Hogsnes & Moser, 2014). De flesta av studierna i denna forskningsöversikt är istället intresserade av att studera barns perspektiv på olika sätt (Ackesjö & Landefrö, 2014;Johansson, 2007;Smith & Barker, 2000).…”