About half a million children in Sweden, aged 6-12 years, attend School-Age Educate Centres [SAECs] before and after school and the SAEC settings are often integrated within the school itself. The aim of this study is to describe, interpret and problematize how the premises enables or limits teaching activities in the SAEC:s. Previous research has reported shortcomings in the physical learning environment in SAECs (Lager, 2020) which also has been confirmed by a governmental report (Sverige, 2020). The study is motivated by the lack of research within the area of physical learning environments in Extended Education.
The study investigates aspects related to the premises that enables and/or limits teaching activities in the SAEC:s. The research questions are:
What, in SAEC's premises, enables and limits teaching activities from the perspective of the staff and from the perspective of the students?
What rules and resources are used by the staff and how are they used to enable staffs teaching and students’ activities?
The theoretical framework is based on the theory of structuration (Giddens, 1984) which is used to describe and analyze, how actions, through structures, produce and reproduce the social system in the SAEC. Data was collected through fieldwork at four SAECs. The fieldwork included walk-and-talk conversations (Klerfelt & Haglund, 2014), interviews and field notes with the children and the staff. Data was thematized through a Codebook Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019).
The results are described through themes and subthemes that highlights aspects of the premises that limits and/or enables students’ activities and staffs teaching. The main focus are concerning dimensioning, connection and floor planning, of the premises. Expected results are to gain insight into how staff and students reason about the premises.
The relevance of this study is that it can contribute with children’s and staffs’ perspectives to the research area, as well as raising important areas for future research. The study will be of relevance for actors such as architects, researchers, politicians, officials, teachers and parents.
2023.
Extended Education, School-Age Educare, Physical Learning Environment, Children, Staff strategies
Extended Education conference 2023, “Between School and Recreation – Quality in Extended Education”, Bern University of Teacher Education, Bern, Switzerland, September 6th–9th, 2023