Leisure-time centres: social pedagogical tradition in educational practice

ABSTRACT

This article is positioned in the context of a discussion about an increasing focus on quality in education. The aim of the article is to explore discourses enacted in Systematic Quality Work (SQW) in municipalities and leisure-time centres. In Sweden, SQW comes within the statutory obligations of municipals and leisure-time centres and constitutes a significant part of teachers’ work. The article explores how local policy-makers, a principal, and two teachers enact SQW policy and transform it into practice. The findings are discussed as recontextualized discourses, norms, and traditions in the various actors’ enactment of SQW in discursive practices. Educational discourse is recontextualized in the studied municipalities, highlighting the norms according to routines and models of SQW in compulsory schools. When SQW is recontextualized in the leisure-time centre, a social pedagogical discourse that highlights children’s social and relational learning is reproduced.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy enactment
• leisure-time centre
• social pedagogy systematic quality work
• meta-interpretation

Leisure-time centres: social pedagogical tradition in educational practice

The aim of this article is to explore discourses enacted in Systematic Quality Work (SQW) in municipalities and leisure-time centres. SQW is a national strategy for development and control of quality in education. The Education Act (SFS, 2010:800) states that municipalities, principals, and teachers all are actors in the continuous work with quality issues. This article examines the people with quality responsibility at a municipality level, as well as principals and teachers in leisure-time centres, and central policy actors. From a policy enactment perspective, traditions, norms, and routines govern the way people work (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012; Czarniawska, 2005; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). New reforms and new tasks are interpreted and transformed in practice according to context, that is, transformed by what is already done in daily practice.

In Sweden, leisure-time centres have been integrated into the compulsory school system since the 1990s and are regulated by the same legislation, the Education Act that covers both learning objectives and quality (SFS, 2010:800). Leisure-time centres have a tradition of social and family politics and emerged from the need for care institutions for children when parents are working or studying (Jansson, 1992; Johansson & Ljusberg, 2004; Rohlin, 2012; SOU, 1974:42; SOU, 1997:21). Along with the extension of care institutions in Sweden, leisure-time centres have developed into a central part of a child’s day, and today over 80% of children from 6 to 9 years attend leisure-time centres before and after school (The National Agency for Education, 2017). At the same time, structural conditions were reduced, especially concerning leisure-time centres; for instance, the integration with compulsory school brought conflicts between different types of teachers (Calander, 2000; Hansen, 1999) and a range of structural cuts that reduced the number of facilities, increased child group sizes, and employed less-educated teachers (Swedish Schools Inspectorate, 2010). The integration also affected school norms of structuring day and context and principals with insufficient knowledge about the centres (Gustafsson, 2003; Haglund, 2004).

The integration of leisure-time centres into compulsory school in 1998 also entailed the bringing together of different discourses and ways of working with learning and knowledge formation. Today, in compulsory schools, SQW is primarily associated with knowledge requirements and formal school knowledge, while in leisure-time centres, it is largely associated with social learning and everyday knowledge. Thus, since the integration, education policy positions leisure-time centres in between social everyday knowledge and formal school knowledge. Today, the leisure-time centre can be seen as an educational institution with a tradition of social pedagogy.

The design of this article synthesizes a meta-interpretation of three texts focusing SQW in municipalities and a leisure-time centre (Weed, 2008). Separate studies have been revisited and re-interpreted their relationship to each other as a means of developing a deeper understanding of the enactment of SQW. In this synthesis, new themes emerged, and the picture as a whole that created a more nuanced view than was permitted by the individual texts. The first text is a licentiate thesis, Organizing Quality: Assessment Practices in Municipalities and Preschools (Lager, 2010), in which new institutional tools are used to explore how SQW is organized by key people in municipalities (Czarniawska, 2005). The second text, Systematic Quality Development Work in a Swedish Leisure-time Centre (Lager, Sheridan, & Gustafsson, 2016), and the third text, ‘Learning to play with new friends’: Systematic Quality Development Work in a Leisure-time Centre (Lager, 2016), explore how, through the use of policy enactment tools, SQW is recontextualized in the practice of a leisure-time centre (Ball et al., 2012). These texts combine approaches where both structure and actor are focused on in the analysis of a policy process. In all three texts, policy texts, interviews, and observations function as data sources and are analysed holistically. Through the medium of policy analysis, the present article explores how discourses are recontextualized in municipalities and at a leisure-time centre concerning SQW. The research question is:

• Which discourses are enacted in the daily practices of SQW in municipality and leisure-time centres?

Leisure-time centres in the field of education

When leisure-time centres were integrated into the regular school system, thus coming under the control of the Ministry of Education and Science, policy was transformed into an educational discourse (Andersson, 2013; Gustafsson, 2009; Rohlin, 2012). Leisure-time centres are connected to the compulsory school’s curriculum, Lgr11 (The National Agency for Education, 2011). In the beginning, Lgr11 was divided into three different parts. Leisure-time centres were covered by both the first part, fundamental values and tasks of the school, and the second part, overall goals and guidelines for education, ‘with the necessary modifications’. They are, however, left out of the third part, which covers syllabuses supplemented by knowledge requirements. As of 1 July 2016, there are new chapters in Lgr11 covering the preschool class (Chapter 3) and the leisure-time centres (Chapter 4) (The National Agency for Education, 2016). For leisure-time centres, this means objectives defined with abilities for children to develop and central content connected to the work in creating possibilities for children to develop the abilities given. Learning in the curriculum is characterized in terms of the individual child’s opportunities to acquire and develop knowledge and values. Creative activities, games, and play are highlighted alongside language, discussions, reading, and writing. Knowledge is expressed in different forms (facts, understanding, skills, and accumulated experiences), which presuppose and interact with each other. These different forms of knowledge are intended to generate a holistic approach to learning and development, along with the idea that different pedagogical approaches should enrich children’s learning and development. Besides this, leisure-time centres have the explicit task of offering stimulating leisure and recreation for children. The quality criteria of leisure-time centres are connected to achievement of national objectives in the curriculum and focus on the way teachers work with creating possibilities for children to develop abilities.

SQW in educational settings

Work directed towards quality issues is increasingly a growth area in education in Sweden and in Europe (Ball, 2003; Beach, 2010; Grek, Lawn, Lingard, & Varjo, 2009; Ozga, Dahler-Larsen, & Segerholm, 2011). In Sweden, SQW is part of the statutory obligations of leisure-time centres and constitutes a significant part of teachers’ work (SFS, 2010:800). This work involves continuous and systematic planning, development, and follow-up in order to achieve national objectives. The municipality is responsible for the quality of the education, and the principal is responsible for the work performed at leisure-time centres.

The work with quality issues in education is researched both internationally and in a Swedish context (Kärrby, 1997; Sheridan, 2001, 2007, 2009; Sheridan, Williams, & Sandberg, 2013; Sylva et al., 2006). SQW from a municipality perspective is, however, poorly researched and with regard to leisure-time centres, quality issues are not researched at all. This article highlights poorly researched fields who together contribute new knowledge of SQW in municipalities and leisure-time centres.

Quality enhancing activities are an increasingly common part of the work of schools and teachers, not only in Sweden, but across the whole of Europe (Ball, 2003; Beach, 2010; Grek et al., 2009; Ozga et al., 2011). The concept of quality is difficult to define (Bergh, 2011; Kärrby, 1997; Munton, Mooney, & Rowland, 1995; Sylva et al., 2006), and different approaches to quality and evaluation have consequences for how education is reviewed and assessed (Ball, 2003; Grek et al., 2009; Ozga et al., 2011; Power, 1997). The systematic work with quality issues that is carried out in schools is often formed in relation to the dominating perspective and discourse of quality in policy and practice (Lager, 2010). There are two main approaches to quality that are currently circulating in the research field on quality in educational settings and relevant to this article. While one concerns quality and evaluation as a tool for the control of education and development of individual skills, the other approach to quality focuses on the evaluation and development of education (Beach, 2010; Sheridan et al., 2013; Åsén & Vallberg Roth, 2012).

Based on quality reports, Hjalmarsson (2013) and Löfdahl and Perez Prieto (2010) discuss how performativity makes social relations and social learning invisible. For example, Saar (2014) and Saar, Löfdahl, and Hjalmarsson (2012) found that the evaluation system for quality may limit the knowledge possibilities in leisure-time centres, meaning that leisure-time activities, based on children’s social well-being, extend beyond what can be measured, evaluated, and controlled. Research also shows that, in its application, SQW can be problematic in that both policy and practice contain different theoretical understandings of what quality involves (Eidevald, 2013; Elfström, 2013; Insulander & Svärdemo Åberg, 2014; Vallberg Roth, 2015). Dahlberg, Moss, and Pence (2009) advocate the use of pedagogical documentation as a tool for developing practice. From a management perspective, Håkansson (2016) shows that documentation of quality tends to focus only on learning environments and less on teaching and teacher competence. When carrying out documentation in order to follow children’s learning and development, teachers use several different forms, each with a different purpose (Alasuutari, Markström, & Vallberg Roth, 2014; Vallberg Roth, 2015). In order to achieve and safeguard quality in preschool, Sheridan and Pramling Samuelsson (2009) argue that the point of departure for SQW must be in daily practice where it can function as a tool for teachers to know whether and in what way they are working towards the objectives of preschool education. This approach is based on a pedagogical perspective of quality and takes into account the intersubjective values, knowledge, and objectives of education in relation to teachers’, children’s, and parents’ experiences of quality in practice (Sheridan, 2007, 2009). To summarize, the research field on quality in educational settings shows that interpretations of the concept of quality can lead to different enactment of SQW in practice with different focus.

Policy enactment theory

In the approach adopted in this article, actors in different contexts and practices are perceived to interpret and translate policy in practice in a way that is hard to predict (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1973). Policy is not perceived to be implemented in a linear manner (top-down) but rather the opposite. In these processes, the policy of SQW is recontextualized into concrete activity (Municio, 1995). The enactment of policy is seen as a way to make sense of policy in practice (Ball et al., 2012). The policy process, as Ball (1993) claimed, involves an understanding of the interplay between structure and actor, and Smith (2006) argued that the policy text is the part that enables the structure and actor to communicate. In this case, the policy process is understood as the sense-making of policy and the ways in which teachers interpret and translate their tasks in practice. Policy actors, such as municipality actors and teachers, are practicing policy as much as following policy (Ozga, 2000). Processes of interpretation and translation lead to a recontextualization of discourses of policy in practice. Policy in text is recontextualized to fit different contexts and actors (Bernstein, 2003). The starting point for the analysis of the enactment of policy involves a discursive, material, and interpretive perspective (Maguire, Ball, & Braun, 2010). Discourse, in this article, is used in line with Ball’s (1990) conceptualization of ‘what can be said, and thought, but also who can speak, when, where and with what authority’ (p. 17).

Meta-interpretive method

A meta-interpretation (Weed, 2008) of three texts was carried out and constitutes the concluding findings in the synthesis. A meta-interpretive synthesis involves an interpretive and iterative process of a careful reading of the texts (Weed, 2008). A meta-interpretive synthesis can also be understood as an interpretive process, the aim of which is to develop a new understanding beyond the individual parts by making conceptual links between the studies.

A meta-interpretive synthesis is based on seven principles related to an interpretative epistemology. These include sampling, interpretations of interpretations, and the provision of a transparent description of the procedure of the synthesis (Weed, 2008). The initial phase for this article involved a comparison of the three texts made on the basis of the research questions, the theoretical points of departure, the production of data, and the analytical concepts. The analytical concepts encompass common theoretical aspects that are significant for the article. These include the interest of enactment, the significance of contexts, and the making visible of the relationship between actor and structure in the meaning-making processes. What mainly distinguishes the first text from the second and third texts are observations of enactment processes in practice. This initial phase is presented underneath in the summarized studies.

In a second phase of the meta-interpretive synthesis, focus was directed to the interpretations in the texts. This meta-interpretation – the interpretation of interpretations – forms the core of the synthesis and is presented under results.

Summarized studies

Text I: organizing quality: assessment practices in municipalities and preschools

This licentiate thesis explored how SQW was enacted by actors in municipalities. The focus of the study was directed to the ways in which SQW was enacted and on how local actors organized SQW in accordance with various directives and intentions. The municipality actors participated in an in-service training programme for SQW in preschools organized by The Agency for School Improvement.

These, 28 municipality actors were followed in an in-depth study, the aim being to explore how the organizational structures for the implementation of SQW in pedagogical practice were created. The data consisted of policy texts, interviews, and observations, which were analysed in several stages using concepts from organizational theory inspired by new institutional perspectives (Czarniawska, 2005; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991; Røvik, 2008). The licentiate thesis aimed to shed light on processes involved in the implementation of SQW and to contribute knowledge about what took place in implementation practices. The questions dealt with who the municipality actors were, the strategies they used, the obstacles they encountered, and the tensions between differing interests involved in SQW.

The findings revealed tensions inherent in SQW in relation to different forms of achievement in terms of relationships to objectives to be achieved and objectives to be striven for. Forms and methods for the implementation of SQW were imported from routines taking place in compulsory school and replicated in preschool SQW processes. Tensions also arose between different perspectives on quality in relation to control and development. The municipality actors talked about the importance of having a unified SQW in their own municipality. However, the analyses showed this was not easy since various obstacles and conflicts of interest made it difficult to standardize SQW, something which can be interpreted in line with the multiple intentions articulated in policy texts. The analyse also showed that tensions provided challenges that needed to be addressed in the work of the municipality actors, in many cases causing problems in practice. However, the findings also showed how legitimacy was sought among actors in contexts other than their own and how strategies used by the municipality actors had the primary aim of unifying the SQW with the help of boundary objects.

Text II: systematic quality development work in a Swedish leisure-time centre

The aim of this text was to explore the recontextualization of SQW in the practice of a leisure-time centre with tools from policy enactment theory (Ball et al., 2012). In relation to SQW in leisure-time centres, diverse discourses of policy for quality were encountered in daily practice. When exploring the policy process with regard to quality, focus was directed to one principal and two leisure-time teachers’ sense-making of policy in planning, documenting, and evaluating the quality of the leisure-time centre and children’s achievement of objectives in relation to national and local policy texts. The questions at issue were:

• How is SQW recontextualized in a leisure-time centre?

• How do teachers plan for, organize, and document children’s achievement of objectives in the leisure-time centre?

This study explored these questions by following the SQW work of two teachers and the principal in a particular leisure-time centre. This particular leisure-time centre was explored as the teachers and their principal emphasised SQW as a central part of their practice and daily work.

By following two teachers’ enactments of policy in planning, organizing, documenting, and evaluating the quality of a leisure-time centre and children’s achievement of objectives, different logics were found. Tensions in practice that visualized pluralistic intentions in policy and educational approaches were also revealed. Planning and organizing as parts of SQW revealed an emerging individualistic perspective. However, when teachers carried out documentation and evaluation, they reconstructed a social pedagogical approach grounded in the tradition of the leisure-time centre with a group-oriented focus (Jansson, 1992; Johansson & Ljusberg, 2004; Rohlin, 2012; SOU, 1974:42; SOU, 1997:21).

The primary findings were summarized in terms of the manner in which an individual perspective on social issues has not only become integrated into the traditional educational field, but also parts of the work carried out at the leisure-time centre (Grek et al., 2009; Ozga et al., 2011). When the leisure-time centre met individualized quality discourse, new demands on quality were enacted in relation to the traditional contextual and institutional factors (Ball et al., 2012). On the other hand, the findings also showed how the recontextualization of documentation revealed a reconstruction of the social pedagogical approach. To conclude, in an educational discourse, the practice of the leisure-time centre functioned as an arena where individualized quality met the reconstruction of a social pedagogical discourse.

Text III: ‘learning to play with new friends’: systematic quality development work in a leisure-time centre

This article explored the recontextualization of SQW in a leisure-time centre with tools from policy enactment theory (Ball et al., 2012). The study was a case study of teachers’ practice carried out through fieldwork using different methods (Merriam, 2009; Municio, 1995). As a consequence of new educational policy demands, leisure-time centres were facing new challenges. This was not least the case when SQW was recontextualized into pedagogical practice where play formed primary content. This article explored two teachers’ planning, organization, documentation, and evaluation in the context of SQW at a leisure-time centre. In particular, the aim was to explore the recontextualization of SQW in practice. To these ends the following research question was formulated:

• How is SQW enacted and recontextualized in the leisure-time centre content, activities, and play?

The specific leisure-time centre that was explored emphasised SQW as a central part of everyday practice. In relation to policy texts, the practice of two teachers working with children’s play was observed and interviews with both of these teachers were conducted (Ball et al., 2012).

The findings revealed a practice where play with play-boxes (boxes created by teachers and children filled with material to stimulate children’s play) was used in a systematic process as a tool to make children’s social learning visible. The teachers created possibilities for children’s learning in a manner in accordance with a leisure-time tradition where social learning was documented and evaluated. A formal educational discourse was not enacted in this leisure-time centre; instead, a social pedagogical approach was reproduced. Nevertheless, SQW was enacted and appeared to help the teachers making their social pedagogical work visible in a new context. The policy process involved the use of the play-boxes in SQW, which revealed how policy is enacted when teachers plan, organize, document, and evaluate play with play-boxes as a form of learning and a means of achieving objectives. It also revealed a reproduction of a social pedagogical tradition where children are supposed to learn to play with new friends and create new relations. This shows a local adaption of policy in practice where this specific form of play (play with play-boxes) becomes a tool to work with social learning.

Similarities and differences in the texts

New institutional theory and policy enactment theory were used in the three texts and combined in order to understand the intertwining of both structure and actor in the enactment of SQW. New institutional tools were used in Text I to explore how actors are structured by routines and norms in the processes of organizing workplace practices (Czarniawska, 2005; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). In Text I, the actors in municipalities with responsibility for the implementation of SQW were in focus, and special attention was paid to the ways in which they attempted to make sense of SQW by adapting the task to their municipality’s organizational routines.

Tools from policy enactment theory were used in the second and third texts to explore the ways in which one principal and two teachers made sense of SQW in relation to context in daily practice (Ball et al., 2012). Policy enactment theory provides a set of methodological tools including interviews and observations, and the analysis of policy texts are treated as a whole with the aim being to explore the complexity in policy processes as a discursive and a social practice. All three texts employed the same methods for data production: policy texts, interviews, and observations. These participants were interviewed at the beginning and end of the training year and were observed at seminars and supervision sessions, as well as group discussion sessions. During the year they also produced action plans that were collected and formed part of the study data.

Texts II and Text III explored the recontextualization of SQW in the practice of a leisure-time centre; focus was directed to teachers’ sense-making of policy in their planning, documentation, and evaluation of the leisure-time centre’s quality, as well as children’s achievement of objectives in relation to national and local policy texts. The data production in these texts was based on policy enactment theory and grounded in well-established and theoretically influenced policy ethnographic procedures (Ball et al., 2012; Beach, 1995). This involves a reflexive process from the identification of the research problem and choice of methods to the analysis of the data. Using different data sources, such as interviews, observations, and policy texts, which are all part of fieldwork conducted over a long period of time, it became possible to generate an understanding of the complexity of the policy recontextualization in focus.

Validity and ethical considerations

Validity was in focus in several stages of the research process. The analytical process is related to the theoretical framework, meaning that the manner in which a theory is used becomes a criterion for validity (Kvale & Brinkman, 2009; Maguire et al., 2010).

The analytical process of abduction, that is, going back and forth, oscillated between empirical data, previous research, and theoretical points of departure (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009; Maguire et al., 2010). In the meta-interpretative method, the interpretation of interpretations was in focus. For making validity clear, three texts were summarized and the similarities and differences among the texts were defined.

Ethical considerations follow regulations by The Swedish Research Council (2002) and are specified in each of the text and are not different to this study.

Results

The synthesis results in two main discourses enacted in SQW. These are described and discussed below as school standards and social and relational learning.

School standards

In Text I, an educational discourse is recontextualized showing that school organization constitutes standards for the municipality actor’s work with SQW. This means that the quality discourse was subordinated for local educational discourses that prevailed in the municipalities. Based on theoretical points, the order of discourse depends on existing local approaches in municipalities to address questions about SQW (Ball et al., 2012; Czarniawska, 2005). The use of school standards resulted in a schoolication of the SQW, which focused on local procedures and principles for the work of the school combined with strategies for SQW. The standards taken from school were not adapted to the preschool curriculum and work with objectives to strive for, but linked to school subjects and individual performance with objectives to achieve. The objectives for compulsory school are not only about individual performance, they also constitute grades and test scores based on the municipal SQW. Templates and models that were designed according to the school’s content and objectives were used because the municipality actors did not know or could not find documentation from preschools as to where achievement was projected in relation to objectives to strive for. This means that school standards were recontextualized, and in this transformation process, school standards appeared with dominant templates and models, which confirm the findings of Alasuutari et al. (2014), Insulander and Svärdemo Åberg (2014) as well as Löfdahl and Perez Prieto (2010).

There is research regarding leisure-time centres that highlights how schools organize leisure-time centres in both content and form (Haglund, 2004). The tension between objectives to strive for or achievement is similar to the leisure-time centre in relation to the curricula LGR11, which embraces both the compulsory school and the leisure-time centre. It is possible to assume that school standards organize SQW even in leisure-time centres. Tensions between the formulations of objectives are clearer for the leisure-time centre, as the curriculum contains both objectives to achieve for individual pupils and objectives to strive for with focus on teachers working conditions for learning.

In Texts II and III, the school’s standards are expressed by a growing individualization discourse that can be seen in objectives for the individual in teachers’ planning and enactment. The increasing individualism in relation to quality of education is also found in research by Dahlberg et al. (2009) and Emilsson (2008). The tension between the different wordings of the curricula, however, becomes significant in relation to the municipality actors wanting to find documentation to use in their accounts of the municipality’s overall SQW in line with Danielsen, Kampmann, and Rasmussen (2010) and Elfström (2013). The rich flora of the forms of documentation that have emerged in (preschool) practice can be linked to the absence of the kind of documentation schools have in form of tests and grades (Elfström, 2013; Insulander & Svärdemo Åberg, 2014). The recontextualization of SQW along the school standards within the municipality contributes in this case to a wide spectrum of models used for documentation in practice and is expected to form the basis of the municipality’s overall record, also found by Alasuutari et al. (2014) and Vallberg Roth (2012, 2015). The prominent role of documentation in municipal SQW can also be interpreted as an expression of a structuring and controlling discourse of quality (Grek et al., 2009; Ozga et al., 2011).

The development of documentation described above does not fully apply to leisure-time centres in Texts II and III. The practice of the studied leisure-time centre is not visible in the extensive use of various forms of documentation, but teachers often construct different models and systems to describe and make visible the children’s social and relational learning, although an ambivalence for leisure-time centre is made visible to describe achievement in relation to individual children or in a group perspective.

Social and relational learning

Texts II and III show that a social pedagogical discourse is reproduced in the leisure-time centre practice and dominating the teachers interpretations and enactment of SQW. The leisure-time centres inclusion in the educational system and integration with primary school in relation to objectives and content, according to previous research, contributed with a schoolication, where the increasingly growing activities around the quality and evaluation of the leisure-time centre has changed in both form and content (Andersson, 2013; Calander, 2000; Haglund, 2004; Hansen, 1999). This means that the leisure-time centre has moved towards a more individualized practice where social aspects are not given the same space as before and that leisure-time centres do not fit in assessment of quality since the social and relational learning cannot be measured in accordance with applicable quality standards, in line with Hjalmarsson(2013), Löfdahl and Perez Prieto (2010), Saar (2014), and Saar et al. (2012).

In the studied leisure-time centre, work with social and relational learning children’s play were made visible by traditions and discourses and were reproduced in the work of children’s relationships and in play activities. Learning in leisure-time centres is recontextualized as children should learn to play with new friends (Lager, 2016). Play and social learning may be marginalized in policy documents, but it is reconstructed in the practice of leisure-time centre despite the policy’s education-embossed intentions, found by Hjalmarsson (2013), Saar (2014) and Øksnes, Knutas, Ludvigsson, Falkner, and Kjaer (2014). It is created and thus recreated policy in leisure-time centre practice that focuses on children’s social and relational learning. School standards emerged, however, in teachers’ planning and implementation, as individual and responsible discourse was combined with a control and profit-focused quality discourse. Individuals are highlighted in a way that characterizes an individualization and responsibility discourse where the child should take responsibility and be self-regulating, confirmed in previous research (Andersson, 2013; Dahlberg et al., 2009; Tallberg Broman, 2011; Vallberg Roth, 2001). However, it becomes clear in the documentation and evaluation of children’s play, where their individual performance would have been able to express itself even from activities in leisure-time centre, the social pedagogical discourse is dominant. The social pedagogical discourse expressed by the documentation and evaluation of the objects is done on a group level.

A distinction emerges between the leisure-time centres in Texts II and III and the municipal actors in Text I implementing SQW in relation to groups and individuals. The leisure-time centre marked resistance from the individual school discourse while the municipal actors are recontextualizing the individual school discourse in templates and models. The municipal actors run by performative aims to make visible and legitimate activities with those known tools (cf. Ball et al., 2012; Danielsen et al., 2010). An interpretation of the leisure-time centre rejection can be related to the resistance Andersson (2013) finds against categorizing and focus of individual children in leisure-time centres. The traditionally group-oriented leisure-time activity, where the group in many cases represent the working tool, contradicts the perspective of the quality that the individual school discourse provides (c.f Jansson, 1992; Johansson & Ljusberg, 2004; Rohlin, 2012; SOU, 1974: 42; SOU, 1997: 21). Overall, the reproduction of the social pedagogical discourse is a way for the leisure-time centre to handle the new quality task focused on SQW, based on an already established and proven way to work with social and relational learning.

Conclusions

This article is positioned in the context of a discussion about an increasing focus on quality in education. It is against this backdrop that focus is directed to ambitions to enhance SQW in the municipality and the leisure-time centre. The findings are here discussed in terms of recontextualized discourses, norms, and traditions visible in the actors’ enactment of SQW in discursive practices (Ball et al., 2012; Powell & DiMaggio, 1991).

First, an educational discourse that highlights norms according to compulsory schools routines and models in the enactment of SQW is recontextualized at the municipality level. To both control and develop quality, municipal actors used known school models and applied them and formulated objectives even for children in preschool, which contributed to the schoolication (cf. Karila, 2012). A clearer and already established structure dominated municipality actor’s interpretations and implementations in a performativity school discourse. At the same time, it must be emphasized that in the leisure-time centre, no clear schoolication emerged, which could mean that schoolication only takes place in policy texts and at the municipal level. Further research on leisure-time practices needs to focus explicitly on the daily work and conditions given for children as well as teachers.

On the other hand, when SQW is recontextualized in the leisure-time centre, a social pedagogical discourse that highlights children’s social and relational learning is reproduced. In the leisure-time centre, a social pedagogical discourse was recontextualized, and the social and relational learning was what the teachers mostly enacted. It was only objectives in the curriculum regarding children’s social relationships that were planned, applied, documented, evaluated, and followed up on. Overall, this means that the local order of discourse that organizes the leisure-time centre is social pedagogical discourse dominant. The educational discourse that was so evident in the municipal level was subordinated in the leisure-time centre.

Another important backdrop for this discussion is the leisure-time centres’ condition to work with the management of objectives and SQW. When the leisure-time centres in Texts II and III were studied, the new chapter in the curricula wasn’t formed. Instead, it is possible to assume that the teachers interpreted there work in line with norms and values in Chapter 2 of LGR11. An alternative assumption is that what teachers in leisure-time centres are able to do and make their focus is only social relations and that there are no opportunities to cope with more content in the curriculum. The size of child group, the limited time for planning and evaluating, the unclear tasks for leisure-time centres, the principles of limited knowledge of the work, and past reforms do not allow for many opportunities for the teachers to handle, that is, the bringing together of different forms of educational practices creates unclear directions.

Overall, there appears to be a tension between formal school standards and social and relational discourse in a social pedagogical tradition. Part of the interest concerns the nature of the objectives in the curriculum, which are important in terms of how documentation is carried out in municipalities and in opposition to pedagogical practices. This, in turn, involves the problem of finding forms of documentation to demonstrate achievement in relation to objectives to achieve versus objectives to strive for. In sum, the main findings of the article are that different formulations of objectives are important for the documentation of achievement in SQW, while the municipal level is reproduced in an individual educational tradition and in the leisure-time centre, it is reproduced as traditional, social pedagogical content in the form of a new way of working. This can lead to tensions in SQW between different policy actors focusing on different things trying to make sense of policy in practice.

The meta-interpretation used in this article made it possible bringing together knowledge from different studies. It also made it possible to reinterpret the separate interpretations forming a deeper understanding of policy enactment of SQW in educational settings. The knowledge given should be related to the methods virtues and limitations and as dealing with case studies it is a strength bringing several studies together. The reinterpretation of different studies could be a limitation but the two-stage phase of working with the method strengthens the process of analysing.

It is proposed that future research be directed to the enactment of different types of education in relation to the documentation of diverse objectives and how principals and municipalities enact SQW in relation to their varying responsibilities. Additionally, future research needs to explore the consequences of the reforms of leisure-time centre from the children’s perspective.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr. Karin Lager is a Ph.d. in Child and youth studies.

ORCID

Karin Lager http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6062-0565