In recent years, the number of different course books focused on school-age educare available for undergraduates in teacher education programs for primary school has increased. Thus studying what particular version of school-age educare is legitimized in this discursive practice and how this is done rhetorically becomes pertinent. This article examines and illuminates how this course literature – used at several universities in Sweden – stages a certain way of speaking about school-age educare and thereby may ascribe teachers and children specific subject positions. The study shows how recurrent ideological dilemmas are used as linguistic resources to manage some constantly present contradictions: school-age educare is supposed to be both democratic and child centered, as well as professionally planned and lead. The findings illuminate a homogenous depiction of how school-age educare is distinguished from traditional and formal schooling and thereby promoted as a unique but also necessary form of education. As a consequence, an ideal teacher is someone who is specialized in being actively passive and passively active, and an expert on children’s learning while children are considered expertson themselves and in the activities as well. That is, teacher’s professionalism in educare is tied to the skill of not being formal and school-like, but still being educational in a way that promotes politically-approved learning and development.

In Sweden there has in recent years there been an increase in literature focused on school-age educare available for undergraduates in teacher education program for primary school, specializing in school-age educare. With this, it seems pertinent to study which particular version of school-age educare that is legitimized in this discursive practice, and how this is done rhetorically. Thus, this article examines and highlight how this literature – used at several universities in Sweden – stage a certain way of speaking about this phenomenon and thereby ascribes teachers and children specific subject positions. The study shows how recurrent ideological dilemmas are used as linguistic resources in order to manage some constantly present contradictions; school-age educare is supposed to be both democratic and child centered, as well as professionally planned and lead. The findings illustrate a homogenous depiction of how school-age educare should be distinguished from traditional and formal schooling and thereby be viewed as a unique but also necessary form of education. As a consequence, an ideal teacher is positioned as someone who is specialized in being actively passive and passively active, and as an expert on children´s learning while children are to be considered as experts in the activities as well. That is, teacher’s professionalism in educare lies in the skills of not being formal and school-like but still being educational in a way that promotes politically approved learning and development.

This dissertation builds on the basic question of how individuals are formed and created as citizens in society today, and how individuals construct themselves as citizens in this society. It takes interest in how they are managed to govern themselves through specific constructions of citizenship, and looks at how the exercise of power establishes certain knowledge that affects their view of themselves and generates truths about how they are expected to live their lives. Simultaneously, the dissertation deals with the concept of freedom: what does it mean in contemporary society, how can one be free today, and what dangers might this liberty involve?

In a broad sense, the analysis centres on the relationship between education and society; more specifically, it engages with the Swedish education system and its construction and production of desirable citizen subjects. The concrete example deals with the institution called leisure-time centre, with a purpose to investigate and problematise how institutionalised leisure-time is staged and legitimised in Sweden today. The studies take as a common starting point the following research question: how are children and personnel governed discursively in and through leisure-time centres?

The first empirical contribution provides historical context for the study. In this, the `problematic leisure-time´ of today is outlined based on education policy documents relevant for children aged 6–13 years. These texts are discussed together with similar texts gathered from two other periods in history in order to give perspective on aspects of the leisure-time centre that may seem obvious in our own time.

The first separate article investigates how talk about activities in leisure-time centres is couched in terms of meaningfulness and consists of an analysis of the ideological tension between democracy and authority, which the governmental authority, the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (Skolinspektionen), must address in its discursive work. 

The second article explores how the production of systematic reporting and documentation by personnel in leisure-time centres works through specific self-technologies in the form of confessional practices and which can be said to be primarily about constructing a free but loyal collective subject.

The third article problematises the use of democracy as a method to produce specific citizen subjects in leisure-time centres. Children’s councils are analysed, focusing on how different nuances of influence are staged discursively by participating children and personnel. The article highlights how democracy – through pastoral care and in the name of children’s influence – becomes a governmentalising technology that produces an active, responsible and learning citizen.

In summary, this dissertation highlights how leisure-time centres are staged and legitimised in Sweden today. The analysis shows how an administration of children and control of the development of society through the autonomous, competent, and voluntarily active individual is apparent; power operates through a perceived freedom in a way that makes the free choice the `right´ choice. With political ideas about forming a forward-looking mentality, children – and personnel – are constructed as a project of learning and improvement.

This article draws attention to the way some theoretically driven researchers discuss an insistent need for reframing the ontological and epistemological assumptions in the field of research known as childhood studies. Using a rhetorical approach, I will take a closer look at how their vocabulary is constructed and made credible through an attempt to find a cohesive language applicable in an interdisciplinary discourse. The article points to the paradoxical claim of taking a step away from a modernist way of thinking, while the arguing is based on a modernist approach. In addition, it also highlights constructions of a certain ideal researcher.

The focus of this article is to analyze the systematic quality management of educational settings the way it is present in Swedish leisure-time centers. The study explores how the production of both systematic reporting and documentation works through self technologies in this discursive practice. The analysis will illustrate and discuss how the systematic quality work viewed as a discursive practice is expected to be both self-scrutinizing and transparent, but also how this process is supposed to be made with a certain `correct´ attitude—what can be described as the ‘will to improve’. Moreover, it interrogates how the systematic quality management operates strategically and politically to exercise power on and through the personnel working at leisure-time centers. In the empirical material discussed, an ongoing subjectification appears, which takes the form of confessional practices. This can be said to be primarily about constructing a free but loyal collective subject, who produces systematic quality work in line with what the educational authorities want to happen. Such a process of subjectification gives rise to a collective subject, which is regarded as having unavoidable responsibility for an infinite need of quality improvement through confessional acts of ‘truth’.

Artikeln problematiserar hur demokrati används som metod för att producera specifika medborgarsubjekt i fritidshemmets utbildningsverksamhet. Avgränsade situationer i form av fritidshemsråd studeras med fokus på hur olika nyanser av inflytande iscensätts av de barn och den personal som deltar och hur detta görs genom bemötande av idéer om expertis och likvärdighet. Teoretiska och metodologiska utgångspunkter hämtas från ett diskurs-analytiskt perspektiv på styrning genom pastoral makt (Foucault, 1983; Smith, 2014) och med vars hjälp analytiskt intresse riktas mot hur statliga fostransambitioner uttrycks, hanteras och balanseras i relation till elevinflytande i den språkliga aktivitet som pågår i råden. Genom empiriska exempel problematiserar och synliggör studien hur demokrati – genom pastorala omsorgstekniker och via olika nyanser av elevinflytande – blir en form av styrning och produktion av medborgarsubjekt med vissa önskvärda egenskaper.

When discussing children’s leisure-time centers in Sweden, talk about their activities is often couched in terms of meaningfulness. This appeal to «meaningfulness» can be seen as a useful but also a troublesome rhetorical resource. When educational authorities formulate institutional assignments, they must accommodate opposing views and yet meet certain political recommendations. An analytical perspective both informed by Michel Foucault’s writings on ‘governmentality’ as well as Michael Billig’s notion of ideological dilemmas will in this study be harnessed. Principally, this study investigates the ideological tension between democracy and authority, which the governmental authority, ‘The Swedish Schools Inspectorate’, must take care of in its linguistic work. This paper argues that the concept of meaningfulness is used in order to bridge various contradictions surrounding the democracy-authority dilemma.