A real dilemma for those who work with or are involved in School Age Educare Centers (SAEC) is the lack of a didactic theory or framework for the specific subject leisure pedagogy. The Swedish school inspectorate has also criticized the quality of the teaching activities in the SAEC in 2018. This fact creates problems for staff in SAEC, stakeholders, and teacher educators. Since the staff in SAEC also work in school, they need to organize teaching activities in two different settings where the steering documents, pedagogical gools and traditions are partly different. Consequently, this leads to several possible concrete varieties of didactical considerations depending on which steering documents apply to a particular task (Hansen Orwehag, 2015). Previous research has been sparse and the existing one is mostly of a reasoning and argumentative nature. Not many empirical studies are available (Boström et al. 2021). Some researchers have pointed out important aspects in the didactics of the SAEC, but no one has formed a theoretical framework. Therefore, we believe that didactics should be researched and that it should be based on the activities in the SAEC and its actors because didactic in SAEC is something different compared to didactic in school subjects. This study is based on an extensive web-survey answered by 505 stakeholders in SAEC within nine different professions (eg. SAEC-teachers, SAEC-students, principals and researchers).
The theoretical foundation consists of theory building whereby various theoretical perspectives will be visible in different phases of the research process. In the starting point of the study, the methodological process will rely on informed constructivist grounded theory (GT) (Charmaz, 2014) as way to analyse the empirical data. The approach will also help to open, widen, and put the empirical data into a scientific context. Because this is a study of and about didactics, we will relate to two well-established theoretical traditions, the Anglo-Saxon (Westbury, 2000) and the German (Klafki, 1997). The use of these theories is in line with central starting points in informed GT ideas of abduction and theoretical sampling, which emphasize the importance of a researcher having (a) extensive knowledge of relevant theory and research in the field and (b) an openness to generating new knowledge with help of empirical data.
This study will use an exploratory sequential mixed methods design (Creswell, 2014). The web survey has fixed response options and open questions which makes it possible to analyze the answers with both analytical statistics (Brunnström & Barkowsky, 2018) and by an informed GT approach (Charmaz, 2014). Using GT as a methodological strategy, the data will be collected systematically depending on the focus. The empirical data will make it possible to categorize didactic strategies.
Expected findings Expected outcome are a variety of answers depending on the profession, but also a unique overview of the perceptions from main actors in the field, the staff in SAEC. A didactic model based on practice will be distinguished.
2021.
Teachers matter - but how? An international conference on didactics, pedagogy, and classroom research. Växjö, Sweden. October, 13-15, 2021.