Att skapa ordning för det estetiska i skolan. Diskursiva positioneringar i samtal med lärare och skolledare

Abstract

Recent rhetoric on aesthetic activities of the school has gained an increasingly large\nscope over the last few decades in Swedish texts on educational politics and educational\nscience. In relation to the questioning of the Government-controlled school,\nthe fi eld of school and aesthetics is studied from an interest in how ideals of knowledge\nare created and preserved through specifi c control strategies.\nThe starting point of the study is that the fi eld of aesthetics and school is created\nin discursive practices through linguistic interaction by way of specifi c power\ntechniques. The aim is to identify and describe current discourses relating to the\naesthetic activities in compulsory school, and to problematise these with regard to\npower and control.\nData-collection included individual and group interviews with 55 teachers and\nhead teachers from seven compulsory schools during the years 2002–2004. The\nparticipants conducted the discussions concerning “the aesthetic activities of the\nschool” by themselves.\nIn the analysis, fi ve discourses concerning the construction of legitimacy surrounding\nthe aesthetic activities of the school were identifi ed and subsequently fi ve\ndiscourses concerning the construction of legitimacy surrounding the aesthetic\ncompetence of the teachers. The result shows that the discourses might be construed\nas being based on more comprehensive discourses signifi cant to our time; education\nfor freedom and exercising social control in the name of aesthetics.\nThe idea of the inherent power of aesthetic activities to alter a person’s character\nand capability of leading a “good life” may be said to fi t in well with a time of striving\nfor free and harmonious citizens in tune with an accepted social behaviour.\nIn conclusion, from this message the teachers are portrayed not as more or less\ncompetent professionals but as free and exemplary persons.

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