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