The Pisa survey shows that equivalence has deteriorated in Swedish schools (SOU 2025:19) and the National Evaluation in Arts Education (The Swedish Agency for Education 2015) shows a gender gap in study results in the school subject visual arts to the detriment of boys.

Previous research in the field of gender perspectives on visual arts education shows how the subject has been gendered throughout the history of the subject (Saar, 2005; Wikberg,2014). Studies by Hellman (2017) demonstrate how students can transcend gender norms of masculinity by creating video diaries, using popular culture. 

Objectives

Several studies on gender and student behavior in school (Holm, 2008; Skarre Aasebø, 2010; Zimmerman, 2018) acknowledge the issue of anti-school culture and the culture of effortless achievement among boys. These behaviors can be understood as connected to hegemonic masculinities. Öhrn and Asp-Onsjö (2014) notes how the hegemonic and accepted ways of performing masculinity in school balance study efforts and social positionings. This could be explained as an expression of a postindustrial society.

Aim and research questions

The overall aim of the study is to contribute to knowledge about the conditions for equivalence in visual arts education in grades 7–9 in Swedish compulsory school, with a focus on both students’, especially boys’, participation and the visual arts teacher’s didactic considerations. The specified aim of the study is to investigate boys’ subject positionings (Foucault, 1982) and performative stagings (Butler, 2007; Hellman, 2017) of self in the school subject visual arts. This, to understand the conditions for participation in visual arts education and further reflect on what kind of possibilities there are to encourage boys’ engagement in the subject by encouraging the use of different multimodal forms of expressions. The aim of the study is achieved through the following questions:

• What subject positionings are assumed and staged by boys in the subject visual arts in the teaching situations where the study is conducted?
• How are boys’ staging and participation in the studied teaching situations in visual arts enabled and limited, with a particular focus on masculine
subject positionings?

Theoretical framework: 

The main focus of the study is to understand prerequisites for boys’ participation in the subject visual arts in compulsory school. To achieve this, I use theories about masculinities to comprehend the social regulations and norms that influence boys’ behavior and performative stagings (Butler, 2007) in school. The theories applied in this study are mainly within a poststructural framework. This approach stems from my interest in the gaps and inbetweens within the social structures of the visual arts classroom, where cracks and openings for change can occur. These theories are framed within this study through the concepts of affordance (Gibson, 1979/2015), liminal space (Turner, 1982; Maddison, 2020) and lines of flight (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988). To understand how these concepts unfold concretely in the investigated contexts, I use the theory of performativity (Butler, 2007) to reflect on the material in the study. Here the concepts subject positionings and agency (Foucault, 1987/2003) as well as affordance (Gibson, 1979/2015) are significant. The dynamics of subject positionings and agency are analyzed using multimodal social semiotic theory (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001), which helps to examine how these are expressed in films and videos created by the students. Connell’s (2005) theory of hegemonic masculinity is utilized to understand how different masculini-ties relate to hegemonic structures.

Method The method of this study is visual ethnography with autoethnographic parts due to me having several positionings as artist, researcher and teacher (Irwin & De Cosson, 2004) in the visual arts classes where the study was conducted. Participatory observations took place during the period of 2019–2021. In total, 81 students in grade 7–9 participated in the study. The main focus of the observations was one class in 8th grade and students in three classes in grade 9. I observed a total of 40 lessons, where every lesson lasted 90 minutes. Observations in the form of written text and sketches were used to capture different teaching situations in the classroom but also conversations with the students (Fors & Bäckström, 2017). The empirical material produced consists of participatory observations, fieldnotes and sketches, photographic documentations and students’ art works. The study is conducted as a visual ethnography (Pink, 2013) but also partially an autoethnography (Chang, 2016) since I study my own work as a visual arts teacher. Methods used are participatory observation where data is produced through both written field notes and visual field notes in the form of reflective sketches (Calvo, 2017) from my teaching in the classroom. In the material is included photo documentation of the students’ artistic works such as drawings, paintings, sculptures and films. In addition, there are also influences from the students’ visual culture in the form of artefacts and documents from digital learning platforms. Screenshots from students’ photographs and films are processed by me in watercolor as part of the de-dentification of the students. In my research I have adhered to the general aspects of ethical considerations that were followed by me throughout this study. These included following guidelines of ethics from the Swedish Research Council (2017), obtaining consent from students and their parents, deidentification of the participating students in the research material, and an ethical approach towards participants, the empirical material produced, and the visual and textual presentation of the study. Thus, following the ethical guidelines concerning information, consent and confidentiality, the students could end their participation any time. Being both artist, teacher and researcher, inspired by an a/r/tographic triangulation (Spring gay, Irwin & Wilson Kind, 2005), at the same time called for careful ethical consideration, as it was important that the students didn’t feel obliged to take part in the study due to me being their teacher.

Findings Expected findings are related to use of an expanded classroom (Palmér 2024). The findings show notable changes in how the students stage themselves in the visual arts classroom, shifting from more macho- and antischool positionings to more helpful and caring student positionings. When other spaces for learning were made available for the students outside of the physical classroom, which created affordances in the teaching, the students positioned themselves differently in the visual arts classroom. Variations in stagings within the classroom setting were also observed, depending on where and with whom they were working. Sitting in smaller groups and other smaller rooms facilitated lines of flight to both more helpful collaborations and, at times, cultures of effortless achievements. The affordance of the mode of film-making made available a range of different semiotic resources for meaning-making, such as environment, body, voice, movement, facial and bodily expressions, clothes, other props and shifting camera angles. The intertwining of the students’ visual culture, the camera’s affordance, and the diverse locations created liminal spaces that disrupted traditional school norms of masculinity. This broader range of subject positionings was partially reintegrated into the visual arts classroom, with digital tools acting as a bridge to more diverse stagings.

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