Everyday Practice at a Swedish Leisure-time Centre: Pupil´s Opportunities to Influence Free Play and thematic activities

Author(s):

Björn Haglund(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

25. Research on Children's Rights in Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

25 SES 05, Actively Seeking Children’s Views

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-09

11:00-12:30

Room:

207.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

John I'Anson

Contribution

The focal point of this paper is to discuss children’s opportunities to make their voices heard and influence the activity in Swedish afterschool services. The official English terms for these institutions are leisure-time centres or recreation centres. These institutions are for example common in the Nordic countries and after-school programs are their counterpart in the US. However, Swedish researchers and university teachers often use the term ‘school-age educare’ as a way of emphasizing that the activity comprises both education and care. According to the steering document, General Recommendations with Comments (The National Agency for Education, 2014), school-age educare is an activity where the pupils should, among other things, have opportunities to influence the activity. Staff should enhance these opportunities as the pupils, by expressing their thoughts and opinions, can develop an understanding of democracy. Research discussing everyday practice in Swedish leisure-time centres frequently describes the most essential activities aim to support by providing good care, although education has been emphasized more in recent steering documents (cf. the National Agency for Education, 2014).

Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children who are capable of forming their own views also have the right to express those views and the right to have their views given due weight (cf. James, 2007; Shier, 2001; Robinson, 2011). Children’s opportunities to benefit from Article 12 depend on adult cooperation, which means that there is a power imbalance in student-teacher relationships and that this inequality plays a significant role in terms of inhibiting or enabling the implementation of Article 12 (Lundy, 2007; Robinson, 2011). Although steering documents and society discourses highlight the importance of children´s voices, children may find their voices silenced or ignored (see also, James, 2007; Thomas, 2007). The growing attention paid to children´s opportunities to influence should be seen as part of a transition from seeing children as “…an instance of a category to the recognition of children as particular persons” (James, Jenks & Prout, 1998, p. 6) and discussions concerning children´s perspectives and a child perspective should be seen as a part of this growing attention (Einarsdóttir, 2002; Halldén, 2003; Sommer, Pramling Samuelsson and Hundeide, 2013). This article will discuss the construction of everyday practice in one leisure-time centre and its pupils’ opportunities to influence the activities. The point of departure uses Halldén’s (2003) understanding concerning the concept of “a child perspective”, i.e. studying a culture that is designed for children. The concept of “children´s perspectives” is used as a point of departure for studying staff trying to get close to the children’s perceptions. The research questions are:

What opportunities do the pupils have to choose activities and, thereby, influence everyday practice?
What opportunities do the pupils have to participate in democratic decision-making?

This study’s theoretical point of departure originates from a social constructionist perspective which asserts that reality is constructed through the interactions of people (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Burr, 2003). This implies that everyday life, for example the social practice at a leisure-time centre, should be seen as a result of mutual constructions produced and reproduced by pupils and staff. According to Giddens’ theory of structuration (1984), social practices are a product of social systems with inherent power relations that continuously produce and reproduce themselves. Social systems are, therefore, both the medium and the outcome of the practices they recursively organize (cf. Giddens, 1984). The production and reproduction of social practice are constituted by the actors´ interactions and their use of their social positions within the social system.

Method

This ethnographically inspired study is based on six weeks of field work at a leisure-time centre, referred to here as the Sunflower. This methodological point of departure enabled the study of everyday life at the Sunflower and, in so doing, the analysis of the actors´ strategic conduct, which meant studying the staff’s and pupils’ modes of drawing upon rules and resources in their interaction (Giddens, 1979). The field work consisted of participating observations after school, informal conversations and writing field notes (cf. Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007; Walford, 2008). The field work should be seen as an enculturation process where elements of the studied culture enabled opportunities for getting to know the culture, understanding the informants’ tacit knowledge and observing the production and reproduction of the social practice. Additionally, audio-taped walk-and-talk conversations (Haglund and Klerfelt 2013) with staff members and 13 pupils were carried out during the latter part of the field work. During the walk-and-talk conversations, staff members were asked questions concerning, for example, where they were needed most, where they were the best pedagogues, where they thought the pupils learned most, etc. The intention of these questions was to gain a more thorough description of how they understood their position as having the main responsibility for the design of the leisure-time centre activities. Staff were also given a digital camera which they were encouraged to use to take pictures of the places they were presenting and discussing. The pictures functioned as a complement to the content of the audio-taped material and as a reminder of the framing of the locales (see also, Klerfelt and Haglund, 2014). The questions pupils were asked dealt with their opinions concerning which places they found most fun, most boring, most dangerous, most beautiful, rowdiest and most instructive at the leisure-time centre. These questions tried to approach the pupils´ perspectives concerning their everyday practice and determine their opinions about what they found important.

Expected Outcomes

The study of everyday practice was confined to focusing on two activities, “free play” and the “thematic activity”. These activities were chosen because they were the most frequent activities in everyday practice. The construction of the social practice shows that parts of the everyday practice could be described as practice where the staff take their point of departure from the children’s perspectives, i.e. trying to understand and get close to the children’s point of view (Einarsdóttir, 2002; Halldén, 2003) and enhancing democratic values and decision-making. This implies that the staff contribute by giving the pupils opportunities to influence activities during free play using rules, unwritten norms (cf. Giddens, 1984), that indicate utilizing the pupils´ perspectives and interests as a starting point for their dialogues. This also means both handing over opportunities to the pupils to decide the content of these play activities and, also, in interactions with the pupils, giving them opportunities to make their voices heard. The thematic activity can be seen as an activity organized by staff, governed by the pupils´ interests and supported by the staff, which means that the pupils’ opportunities to participate were, in some respects, equivalent to free play. The pupils’ lack of influence concerning their opportunities to affect the planning of the thematic activity was evident however. The staff were often unaware of the pupils´ perspectives because the pupils were never asked. Instead of ascertaining the pupils’ perspectives, which were essential regarding pupils’ free play, the staff members’ point of departure, to a great extent, was grounded in an adult perspective, i.e. focussing on affording “good” activities, activities that can be seen as being supportive to pupils’ development (cf. Halldén, 2003), but without these activities being anchored or discussed with the pupils.

References

Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Doubleday. Burr, V. (2003). Social Constructionism. (2nd Edition). London: Routledge. Einarsdóttir, J. (2002). Children’s Accounts of the Transition from Preschool to Elementary School. In Barn, 4, 49-72. Giddens, A. (1979). Central Problems in Social Theory. London: MacMillan Press Ltd. Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Haglund, B. & Klerfelt, A. (2013). The Swedish leisure-time centre. Past – present – future. In J. Eckarius, E. Klieme, L. Stecher & J. Woods (Eds.), Extended Education – an International Perspective. Proceedings of the International Conference on Extracurricular and Out-of-School Time Educational Research. (pp. 125-146). Opladen: Barbara Budrich Publishers. Halldén, G. (2003). Barnperspektiv som ideologiskt eller metodologiskt begrepp. [A child perspective as an ideological or methodological notion.] In Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige, 8(1-2), 12-23. Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography. Principles in Practice. (Third edition). London: Routledge. James, A. (2007). Giving Voice to Children’s Voices: Practices and Problems, Pitfalls and Potentials. In American Anthropologist, 109(2), 261-272. James, A., Jenks, C., & Prout, A. (1998). Theorising Childhood. Cambridge: Polity Press. Klerfelt, A., & Haglund, B. (2014). Walk-and-talk Conversations: a Way to Elicit Children’s Perspectives and Prominent Discourses in School-Age Educare. In International Journal for Research on Extended Education, 2(1), 119-134. Lundy, L. (2007). ‘Voice’ is not enough: conceptualizing Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In British Educational Research Journal, 33, 927-942. Robinson, C. (2011). Children’s rights in student voice projects: where does the power lie? In Education Inquiry, 2, 437-451. Shier, H. (2001). Pathways to Participation: Openings, Opportunities and Obligations. A New Model for Enhancing Children’s Participation in Decision-making, in line with Article 12.1 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. In Children & Society, 15, 107-117. Sommer, D., Pramling Samuelsson, I., & Hundeide, K. (2013). Early childhood care and education: a child perspective paradigm. In European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 21, 459-475. The National Agency for Education. (2014). General Recommendations with Comments. Quality in Leisure-time centres. Stockholm: Fritzes. Thomas, N. (2007). Towards a Theory of Children’s Participation. In International Journal of Children’s Rights, 15, 199-218. Walford, G. (2008). The nature of educational ethnography. In G. Walford (Ed.), How to do educational ethnography (pp. 1-15). London: Tufnell Press.

Author Information

Björn Haglund (presenting / submitting)

University of Gothenburg

Department of Education, Communication and Learning

Varberg

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