This is about the socialization of school children and how normality is learned and managed in one pre-school class and one fifth grade class in the Swedish compulsory school. The Swedish school is, according to the National Curriculum based on democratic values and respect for the individual. In accordance with these values socialization of the pupil is, as the thesis argues, accomplished through 'benevolent government' by the teachers. To enable this, the pupil needs to learn how to be him or her 'self' according to norms about how the 'self' is to be expressed. The pupil also needs to learn how to balance multiple relations in school and the different aspects that constitutes the social person. Benevolent government is here used as a description of a certain kind of 'teacherhood' dependent on a certain kind of pupil. The pupil-subject that is constructed is a subordinated, self-inspecting, positive, empathic person who will approve of being governed by the teachers through the governing of themselves. The study is based on anthropological fieldwork during two years in these classes.
”Dare to share!”: Confession, motherhood and resistance in The great mother confession
This article explore the meaning of confession in a commercial, secular event – The great mother confession (TGM). The event is understood as imbedded in a therapeutic culture where emotional disclosure, in the form of confessions, is a highly valued practice. In a web-based confession-blog that constitutes part of the TGM-concept, confessions serve to free mothers from supressing norms. The blog becomes an arena for a volatile community where burdening and ”forbidden” thoughts and emotions becomes generalised and disarmed, releasing mothers from guilt. When this function of the blog is questioned from a competing sub-discourse of the therapeutic, emphasising the disclosure of happiness, a struggle emerges over the authority to define the meanings of confession. TGM can be understood as having potential for serving as an arena for challenging norms, but even as norms are implicitly addressed the practice makes a halt at that point. Norms that are seemingly dissolved in responses to confessions are not questioned, only recognised, normalised and de-politicised.
"Dare to share " - the meanings of therapeutic biographies in The Great Mother Confession
"Dare to share" is one of the catchy slogans presented on the website of the popular cultural event, The Great Mother Confession. "To share" refers to the life improving, transformative powers ascribed to the act of "speaking out" about ones feelings, and the construction of therapeutic biographies.
The Great Mother Confession, was arranged in 2009 and 2010 by a Swedish newspaper group. It consisted of an all-day events each year with coaching and entertaining performances and a blog site for mothers public confessions. Based on material from ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the all-day arrangements and close readings of the confessional blogs, this paper aims to explore meaning-making aspects of (mother)confession through emic definitions of the meaning and function of the confessional act. The confessions are also understood as comments on maternal norms.
It has been repeatedly argued by various Swedish experts and quoted in media, that parents only spend a few minutes in daily communication with their children. A quest for the source of this argument developed into an interest in both the phenomenon itself, and in the general understanding that adults of today are “poor” parents.
The article has two aims, the first is to illustrate how this kind of “truth” is constructed and reproduced in arenas such as parents’ meetings and discussions in Swedish parliament, and the second to comment on the dominant Swedish discourse about poor parenthood, childhood and notions of risk. It is here argued that the statement about parents’ lack of time to talk with their children should be understood as a kind of contemporary urban legend/rumour that can both trigger and reproduce moral panic and strengthen adiscourse about weak parents. It is furthermore contended that a prerequisite for the acceptance of such rumours and moral panics as truth, is that they are coherent with an existing dominant discourse, in this case poor contact between parents and children.
The time period is 1941-1951. The place is Siljanskolan, a small boarding school in a Swedishrural setting, influenced by reform pedagogy. The ideological standpoint in this particular settingis that of trying to make the world a better place through a better upbringing of improved humanbeings. It is about offering an alternative educational setting in relation to the national publicschools. School as a home, and home as a school, are related ideas that shape the organization ofeveryday life at Siljanskolan. In a box where children could leave notes with questions, directed tothe school principal, a wide range of topics were addressed. Picking up random samples from thehundreds of questions in the box, we find for example ‘Why do we get salty food?’, ’Why is it warso often?’, ‘Why can't Margareta sleep in The Den?’, ‘Why do we get spanked?’ and ‘Why can't webe free?’ These questions were answered orally at regularly occurring evening assemblages at theschool and accordingly, seventy years later, the answers are nowhere to be found. Still thequestions are in them self interesting and this paper analyses the questions as comments onschool life, on power relations and the regulation of everyday life, as well as comments that aredirected to the ideological level. They are, in a double sense, a kind of micro-narratives wherechildren's voices are heard from within the archive material.
Today, Social emotional learning (SEL) is common in pre-school and school both in Europe and North America. An overall issue in this study concerns the how borders between private and public are constructed and negotiated in schools and pre-schools where socio-emotional programs are practiced. A specific aspect, dealt with in this paper, concerns the processes of internalization, among students and children, of the normative set of values proclaimed by these programs. In this first preliminary analysis we operate within a foucouldian perspective. With this as a point of departure, abilities such as self-control, regulation of emotions and social behavior, and a discursive and social competence for presenting the self are constructed through the production of docile, obedient bodies.
Social emotional learning (SEL) is common in preschools and schools both in Europe and North America today. Programmes for socio-emotional training and the rise of what is labelled therapeutic education have dramatically increased during the first decade of the millennium. In this article, a manual-based programme used for SEL in a Swedish school context is analysed from perspectives rooted in childhood sociology and post-structural studies. The aim of this study is to analyse the discursive constructions of a context of risk and the instilment of specific corporeal regimes. The main issue concerns the meaning and use of the body in the discursive construction of the social competent child within this context of risk. The analysis shows that the socially competent child is shaped and cultivated through self-regulating techniques aiming at creating a docile body, a body that will be a good citizen, a pliant member of the social order.
Social emotional learning (SEL) is common in preschools and schools both in Europe and North America today. Programmes for socio-emotional learning and what is labelled therapeutic education (Ecclestone & Hayes, 2007; Furedi, 2009) have dramatically increased during the first decade of the millennium. In Sweden, schools often justify their use of these programmes as a way of organizing their value-based education (von Br mssen, 2011), that is, as a way of realizing the democratic ambitions expressed in educational policy documents, such as the national curriculum.
Projektet syftar till att belysa olika aktörsperspektiv på implementering av och arbetet med socioemotionella program i den kommunala grundskolan och förskolan. Studien består av fem delstudier av fem kommunala verksamheter där arbete med socioemotionella program har ägt rum. Studien har en etnografisk design. Resultatet visar att implementeringsprocessen har sett olika ut i de studerade verksamheterna gällande initiativ till arbetet (uppifrån och ned, nedifrån och upp eller både och). Gemensamt i samtliga verksamheter var dock att det manualbaserade arbetet infördes utan granskning eller diskussion, vare sig på central kommunal nivå eller ute i verksamheterna. Vidare visar resultatet att många lärare till en början välkomnade manualbaserade program för att få tillgång till verktyg för systematiskt arbete med socioemotionella frågor, men att de snart fann svårigheter att omsätta övningarna på ett meningsfullt och etiskt försvarbart sätt för barnen och eleverna i verksamheten. Lärare uttrycker också osäkerhet gällande vilken skillnad de anser att programmen gjort för barnen/eleverna. Många barn och elever var kritiska mot programmen; barnen i förskolan hade svårt att sätta ord på vad de lärde sig av programmen och eleverna på högstadiet var öppet kritiskta till programarbetet. Eleverna i år tre och fem uttryckte däremot i mer positiva ordalag om det socioemotionella arbetet de tagit del av; deras svar ligger ofta i linje med de motiveringar för programmet som finns i programmen själva och bland lärare. Dessa elever uppvisar därmed ha tillägnat sig en diskursiv kompetens i sitt tal om programarbetet. I rapporten diskuteras också vilka implikationer programarbetet medfört dels för lärarprofessionaliteten, dels för realiserandet av skolans normativa uppdrag.
The aim of this research paper is to describe and discuss different forms of resistance that children display in activities aiming to develop social and emotional competence in preschool and school. Social emotional training/Social emotional learning (SET/SEL) is common in preschool and school both in Europe and North America today. Manual-based programs for socio-emotional training and the rise of what is labeled therapeutic education (Ecclestone &Hayes 2007, Furedi 2009) have dramatically increased during the first decade of the millennium. In Sweden, schools often motivate their use of these programs as a way of organizing their value-based education (von Brömssen, 2011), that is, a way of realizing the democratic ambitions expressed in educational policy documents as the national curriculum.
In this research paper we present the results from to two field studies - one in preschool and the other in lower secondary high school in Sweden. When conducting participant observation during lessons on social emotional learning (SEL), despite the democratic ambitions, children seemed to have little opportunity to influence the activities as the traditional power hierarchies, where children are subordinate, within school and classrooms prevail. Besides, many of the activities in social and emotional learning dealt with issues that both teachers and children defined as private matters - such matters that they usually do not handle in public. In research interviews children expressed many critical opinions on the forms and contents of these activities, but in preschool and school they were no invited to discuss these views. Still the children displayed their attitudes towards these activities in different forms of resistance: A common form of resistance is what here is called instrumentalization, that is to do the assignment or activity as detached as possible. Another form of resistance is making jokes both in relation to the content and form of the activities. Yet another form of resistance is being silent; this non-responsive resistance challenge both the realization of the activity as well as the social order in the classroom.