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Research topic/aim: In 2016 the Swedish school-age educare (SAE) got an explicit part in the curriculum. In that text the concept of teaching was introduced in an explicit way for a profession that formerly hadn’t used teaching to describe their work.

The aim of this study is to contribute with knowledge about the negotiations that are expressed when the curriculum text is interpreted and realized in SAE practice.

Theoretical framework: To analyse and understand the negotiations when the curriculum text is realised in pedagogical practice, parts of Bernstein’s code theory is used. The strength/weakness of the classification and framing of a pedagogical practice constitutes an important basic structure in what Bernstein calls the pedagogical code (Bernstein, 2000). 

Methodological design: Interviews with principals and staff were conducted in six SAEs. This method was chosen to capture unique features and identify common patterns both of interpretation of the curriculum text, and how the curriculum was realised in SAE practice.

The results show that acceptance of the strongly educationally coded concept of teaching was greater in comparison to the commentary material during the formulation process. In particular, staff with pedagogical education at university level with a focus on SAE had reinterpreted the concept of teaching and given it a wider meaning so that it better suited the activities coded in social pedagogy and leisure pedagogy they carried out.

The introduction of the curriculum text had contributed to increased legitimacy for the SAE practice and strengthened the SAE staff in their professional role, but the organisation of the activities, the access to common planning time, the access to their own premises and whether the staff had educational training at university level with a focus on SAE affected the staff's ability to carry out the teaching that is outlined in part four of the curriculum. Unequal power arrangements between after-school centers and schools emerged in both the formulation arena and the realisation arena, and the weaker classified and framed after-school activities were often subordinated to the more strongly classified and framed school activities in the realisation arena.

This shows that the formulation and realization of a part of the curriculum is a complicated process and that in the realisation arena there are negotiations about how the formulated curriculum is to be interpreted and implemented in pedagogical practice. Those who shall interpret and implement the curriculum in practice are working in contexts characterized by pedagogical traditions and are subject to different conditions. Hence, a curriculum text receives partly different interpretations and is realized in partly different ways in different practices.

Relevance to Nordic educational research: This study is of relevance to Nordic educational research since there are both similarities and differences between the Nordic countries in how the practice of childcare for school aged children is organized and governed.

References:

Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity : theory, research, critique (Rev. ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.