WERA TASK FORCE Global Research in Extended Education Conference

Beskrivelse

Choice-based pedagogies in afterschoolcare

Professionals in early afterschool-care (ages 6-9) organize children’s
everyday lives after school, based on theories, ideas and values about what
children need and how they should develop. Through a comparative
interview-study with pedagogues from Denmark and Sweden, about how
and why they organize children’s everyday life at the afterschool-center,
this project aims to explore and expand on the concept of ‘choice-based
pedagogies’ (Sauzet, 2025) in early school-age afterschool-care.
The Swedish school-age educare (SAEC) has a clear complementary mission
in relation to school and since 2016 there is a part of the curriculum that
clarifies the SAEC mission(Gustafsson Nyckel, 2024). In Denmark leisuretime
centers (skole-fritidsordning/SFO) are governed under the act on the
public schools but operate through locally defined aims- and content
frameworks, making their form and aim vary, depending on the local
context.

Hypotheses and research question

What unites after-school care across Denmark and Sweden is that they are
based on variations of choice-based pedagogies, as it is voluntary to attend,
and oftentimes, activities are a possibility, rather than an obligation, for the
children to participate in. Pedagogues organize activities at afterschool-care
in making sense of choice-based pedagogies (Weick et al., 2005). The
conditions of possibility for unfolding choice-based pedagogies, however,
are quite different in Sweden and Denmark. Interestingly, while choicebased
pedagogy is the foundation for after-school-care organizings in
Scandinavia, it has not been explored and unfolded as a concept within
leisure-time pedagogy. This is what this project purports to do, by asking
the following research-question:
How do pedagogues make sense of choice-based pedagogies as they reflect
upon how the everyday-life of the children is organized in the after-school
care?

Theoretical framework

We work with the concept of sense-making for the analysis of the
pedagogues ways of talking the organizing of choice-based pedagogy intoexistence and interpreting this organizing through salient labels and
categories (Weick et al., 2005).

Methods

The project is based on interviews with 5 pedagogues from Denmark, and 5
teachers from Sweden, from a total of 10 different afterschool-care centers,
inspired by timetable-interviews (Sauzet, 2020). In this project we focus on
the sense-making surrounding the the timetables or weekly schedules that
organize the activities of the afterschool care.

Results

The paper will report findings from the interview-study by outlining the
concept of choice-based pedagogy from the viewpoint of the pedagogues
that organize the everyday-life of after-school-care. Further, highlight how
the informants make sense of different dilemmas in the choice-based
practices in everyday life.

Discussion

The paper will contribute to ongoing discussions about what leisure-time
pedagogy is and does, by narrowing in on the concept of choice-based
pedagogy.

Periode	26 sep. 2025
Begivenhedstype	Konference
Placering	Norrköping, SverigeVis på kort
Grad af anerkendelse	International