Paper short abstract:

This presentation is based on fieldwork conducted in the schools and kindergarten in a deindustrialised community in South-eastern Norway and investigates how local World Heritage is understood, ritualised and performed in creating belonging and identity in the education of future generations.

Paper long abstract:

Rituals may function as ways of managing an uncertain world/future. In 2015, two de-industrialised towns, in South-eastern Norway, was give World Heritage status due the industrialisation that took place in the early 1900s. Wealth and prosperity arrived at two rather marginalised areas, but by the end of the century, prosperity was taken away, as industrial production moved to low-cost countries. These communities went from facing a bright future to a rather grim one. For the longest time, the main coping mechanism seemed to be clinging to an industrial golden past and finding ways of reinventing the industrial revolution that once took place. In some sense, the inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage list cemented this coping mechanism to a permanent state. This time around, new industry was directed towards tourism, museum exhibitions and education, and in lesser degree towards traditional industry.

Here, I show how, in local education, the future seems to be ritualised as performances of an industrialised past in educational programmes directed to local children from the ages 5 to 18 years old. I draw on extensive fieldwork for the past 4.5 years in local kindergartens, schools and Cultural schoolbag-programmes. I investigate how the local community (re)interpret the past and past heritage. In turn, the past is utilised to (re)invent the future as uncertainties faced two struggling post-industrialised communities. To some extent, this presentation cast light on how and why, these communities go about protecting tangible and intangible heritage in unstable times.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing from short-term ethnographic studies I undertook in Finnish secondary schools and museums, this paper asks how the past is mediated in the classroom? and what kind of encounters are possible between school pupils and the past in its most contemporary appearance?

Paper long abstract:

Through a multi-site ethnographic account, I re-examine the elusive meaning that cultural heritage has in school education.

The first site comprise everyday assignments when students search, gather information and give presentations about the past in front of the class. In additon to serving curricular purposes, through them students perform and generate expectations about the past. By bringing their vocabulary, interests and familiar practices, these moments act as informal spaces where the curricular, the vernacular, the past and the present meet. The second site comprise digital libraries, and the mechanisms of meaning-making at work in museum institutions shared with their collections online. These spaces reveal the most partial, open and chaotic facet of the past. The digital and historical merge in a medium that requires from students a re-adjustment of expectations and competences to learn their code, but allows a time travel of sorts, in which students can navigate the past from their own vantage point. The last site of this journey considers the contribution of school classes to museum and archive collections that collected their assignments during lockdown. Rather than their pandemic experience, their assignments capture their teenage experience and voice what they consider important today, which will become the stuff of history.

To conclude, cultural heritage is a practice through which young people may draw on, navigate an co-construct the past (and the fleeting present) in everyday contexts. Using digital libraries, expressing and documenting their own cultures, the class becomes a cultural heritage site in its own right.

Paper short abstract:

Leisure-time centres could be characterized as post-Christian, which means that Christian holidays have been redefined and lost their religious content. This leads to uncertainty in how it can be talked about. Issues concerning how teachers deal with religion in post-Christian schools are discussed.

Paper long abstract:

As public spaces, Swedish schools and leisure-time centres are often characterized by a post-Christian attitude, which means that Christian holidays and the performance of Christian rituals have been redefined and lost their religious content in the school context. Just as the school often finds it difficult to recognize post-national youth, because it is born out of nationalism and ideas about the creation and maintenance of the nation, pupils or teachers with religious identities hence cause certain problems. Their presence challenges the post-Christian attitude. This creates challenges for the leisure-time centre teachers as leaders, the school as an organization and the relationship between teacher and pupil, or pupil and pupil.

In my presentation, I will discuss issues concerning how leisure-time centre teachers deal with religion in a post-Christian context. Many studies have dealt with religious education in the classroom context or, as in my own previous study, the study visit context. Significantly fewer studies have been interested in the contexts where the relationship to religion is more open and less regulated. How do leisure-time centre teachers work with issues concerning religion? By analysing it from a perspective concerning post-Christianity, it becomes interesting to try to understand what is perceived as viable and what is perceived as confessional and thus problematic (in municipal schools).

Paper short abstract:

This presentation is about the presence of nearness, violence and risk in the physical care relationship between staff and children in school-age educare centers in Sweden. The material comes from fieldwork at two school-age educare centers and consists of observations and interviews with the staff.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation is based on a research project which studies the physical interaction between staff and children in the Swedish school-age educare (SAE). My focus is on how the staff interpret, explain and physically act on different children's needs for physical care, as well as how the staff experience and use their bodies in interaction with children.

In parallel with a more widespread teaching discourse, a concern for sexual abuse in childcare has also grown globally since the turn of the millennium. Research has shown how this in particular has led male educators to develop strategies to avoid the risk of being made suspicious (Åberg, Hedlin & Johansson 2020). In this presentation, I will also discuss how a risk perspective on physical interaction with children can be seen as integrated into the staff's mindset and actions.

The material comes from fieldwork at two SAE centers in Stockholm over the course of a year (2022). In the fieldwork I observed physical interaction between staff and children and interviewed the staff about their experiences, thoughts and considerations regarding this. In this presentation I will start from the theoretical perspectives of critical perspectives on norms (Butler 2004) and emotional labour (Hochschild 2012).

The preliminary results show how nearness, violence and risk are present in the care relationship between staff and children at SAE centers and how this is surrounded by norms and emotions (or the regulation of emotions).

Paper short abstract:

Digital devices and technologies are said to improve educational practices. Based on ethnographic research in a German school this paper focuses on the effects of the digital and promises attached, and highlights uncertainties caused in class and beyond.

Paper long abstract:

Digital devices and educational technologies are said to improve classroom practices to guarantee better learning outcomes. Whereas educational processes are experience-based and rather uncertain (Ingold 2018), the algorithm-based tools promise practical certainty, predictability, and objectivity. However, rather little ethnographic research has yet been done how they impact those who use them in class (Cone 2021; Alirezabeigi et. al. 2020). Studies of educational technologies often focus on the digital architecture but tend to neglect what happens in front of the screen. Ethnographic research focuses on the disruptive or innovative but tends to forget the quotidian life of schools (Sims 2017).

Based on a yearlong ethnographic study at a German comprehensive school in 2021 the paper will give insight into the everyday life of a so-called ‘tablet class’. Foremost, the aim is to show how digital devices become co-players in negotiating, mediating, processing, and evaluating certainties in educational practices, e.g., via automation. Secondly, the paper elaborates three different, but entangled aspects of uncertainty. Namely uncertainty on the part of teachers, students and ethnographer caused by intransparency – devices and algorithms seemed to have a mind of their own; furthermore, uncertainty caused by the interdisciplinary design of both team and methodology; and finally, uncertainty caused by the corona virus as yet another invisible but highly influential constituent for all involved in the ethnographic encounter. All three aspects have proven fundamental for an analytical understanding of what is going on in the classroom.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is based in a small project on Swedish upper secondary school teachers’ experiences of working with students’ societal involvement and the challenges and uncertainties this may entail. The material consists of interviews and the analysis starts from a cultural analytical perspective.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of this paper is to examine issues around how teachers in Swedish upper secondary school work with and handle societal involvement among students in their teaching and classroom practice and the challenges and uncertainties this may entail. The material stems from a small ethnological research project and consists of qualitative, semi-structured interviews with upper secondary school teachers. The theoretical framework starts from the concept of agency and the analysis is based on cultural analytical tools such as perspectivization. The paper furthermore discusses and exemplifies how ethnological approaches may contribute to research on school and education.

The preliminary results show that the interviewed teachers regarded the students’ involvement in societal issues such as the climate crisis, me-too, Black Lives Matter and various topical or local political and societal issues, as a potential didactic resource in several subjects and in several ways. At the same time, they experienced a number of challenges and uncertainties connected with this, regarding for instance giving space for student initiative and still having enough time to cover the curriculum, and the difficulty with managing classroom discussions that could sometimes become quite heated without discouraging student participation and involvement. With the school strikes for the climate, the challenges could also concern uncertainties around how many students would attend school on a particular day, and the dilemma between wanting to encourage societal participation and democratic competence, while acknowledging the problems with students missing too much of their education.

Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses how the concept of sustainable development is transformed to pedagogical practice in primary schools. What might the practice and challenges look like in today’s Swedish school? The analysis is based on some examples from actual tasks performed by student teachers.

Paper long abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what it means to work with sustainable development within the context of the school. What do practices and challenges look like for sustainability education in today's Swedish schools? Whose responsibility is it to ensure that relevant knowledge about sustainability is taught to students? These questions are discussed based on a cultural analytical perspective based on a material that consists of actual tasks that student teachers have completed. The analytical discussion revolves, among other things, around how sustainability education tends to stay at a relatively superficial level, largely due to the pedagogical and benevolent idea of not creating climate anxiety in students. Here, however, arises the challenge of being able to convey a deeper knowledge at the same time, something that is required to understand the dignity of the sustainability problems. How can one seriously understand that the situation is urgent while not feeling climate anxiety? How can you combine age-appropriate pedagogy with complex knowledge? These are questions that future teachers will have to deal with in their everyday work.