Björn Haglund

Afterschool programs and leisure-time centres: arenas for learning and leisure.

Abstract Afterschool programs in the United States and leisure-time centres in Sweden could emphasize childrens leisure as well as be of importance to childrens learning. However, in both cases, the association to leisure is mostly ignored and its acceptance is not widely practised. Instead, other discourses that are more related to the field of education serve as a guide for programming in afterschool programs and leisure-time centres. The authors present the argument that afterschool programs and leisure-time centres could be more associated with leisure activities and presented in a new way with guidance from the field of leisure that could also be beneficial for educational research. Existing definitions of leisure, and their possible consequences for the activities, are discussed in terms of the framework of afterschool programs and leisure-time centres. The authors argue that knowledge grounded in understanding the importance of leisure and its potential to develop and satisfy people could be a means to develop both the activities and the current work of the staff in afterschool programs and leisure-time centres.

A philosophical view on concepts in psychiatry

This essay first outlines a philosophical theory of concepts and then applies it to two areas of relevance to psychiatrists, especially forensic psychiatrists. In the philosophical theory, the respective roles of verbal and non-verbal definitions are illuminated, and the importance of the phenomenon of division of semantic labour is stressed. It is pointed out that vagueness and ambiguity of a term often result when the term is used for several practical purposes at the same time. Such multi-purpose uses of terms may explain both the current problems associated with the Swedish forensic-psychiatric concept of a severe mental disorder and some of the shortcomings of DSM-IV.

Everyday practice at the Sunflower: the staff's representations and governing strategies as contributions to the order of discourse

Swedish leisure-time centres were formerly part of Swedish social and family policies but were transferred to an educational context in the 1990s. This transfer was accentuated by both the Education Act of 2010 and the new teacher training established in 2011, which also included education particularly directed for leisure-time centres. The states intention with this discursive shift was to highlight education and learning within the activity in a more distinct way. This article is based on an ethnography-inspired study at one leisure-time centre called the Sunflower. The data are based on six weeks of field work including participating observations, field notes and walk-and-talk conversations. The study takes its point of departure from representations by staff concerning what they emphasise regarding the centres activity, how these representations are related to each other and which strategies staff members use when talking about and monitoring the pupils’ activities. The results show the strong presence of older traditions concerning values and practices regarding the performance at work: supporting children with good care, stressing the importance of childrens free play and using a peripheral subject position during work. The results also show that a stress on the child-to-staff ratio as circumscribing the activity which is enhanced by the pupils misallocated age distribution.