This study presents an analysis of children’s perspectives on teacher (non)participation in Swedish school-age educare centers, which portray teachers as facilitators of freedom, integrity, and sociability. Group interviews with 51 children, age 6–9 years old, were conducted and analyzed. The results challenge adult assumptions about children’s needs and preferences, highlighting the importance of balancing self-determination with guidance. Children desire both freedom and support from teachers, emphasizing the importance of teacher presence when needed while allowing space for independent decision-making. Teacher participation is crucial for children’s social development and safety, contributing to their sense of meaningful leisure and personal growth. 

The aim of this collaborative project with Swedish school-age educare (SAEC) teachers was to understand and develop teaching, focusing on games, physical activities, and outdoor excursions. Children's insufficient physical activity is a societal problem, and because most Swedish students age 6 to 9 are enrolled in SAEC, this can be a critical educational arena. The concept of powerful knowledge is used to emphasize knowledge that can help students handle contemporary and future challenges, operationalized here by using a typology of roles students are invited to enter by doing activities. The findings show that some roles are more frequent than others, often connected to voluntariness, free time, and teachers' relational approach. The findings also show that in the transformation of teaching, the how question seem more of a dilemma to the SAEC teachers than the what and why questions. We argue that SAEC teaching offers great possibilities to combine different student roles in a way that is more likely to connect knowledge about games, physical activities, and outdoor excursions to their own or others' lives and society. At the same time, teachers experience great challenges in how to teach in a way that meets the specific goals of SAEC education.

Since 2016, the Swedish school-age educare has had a clarified mission regarding knowledge and teaching, and mathematics has been an explicit part of the education. Drawing on six universal mathematical activities, this study aims to contribute knowledge about the experiences and lessons learned within a project in which school-age educare teachers, in collaboration with researchers, plan, implement, and evaluate mathematical activities. The research process was guided by an action learning model and involved four teachers working at one school and represented four departments. The results indicate that the challenges arising during the processes were threefold: (i) gaining a sufficiently clear understanding of the teachers’ knowledge and experience with mathematical activities to provide optimal support during the planning phase, (ii) striking a balance between the teachers’ own ideas and the level of guidance provided by the researchers in designing a teaching session, and (iii) planning, conducting, and evaluating instruction within an educational context that is defined only by central content, without specific learning objectives for students. Nonetheless, the study demonstrates the potential of school-age educare to offer students subject-based teaching through practical-aesthetic forms of expression and a play-based pedagogical approach, as well as the opportunity to learn and develop in an educational context where their performance is not formally assessed.

Societal changes during the last few decades have given rise to the expansion of extended systems in nations across the world. Despite differences regarding age groups and relations to compulsory school, the task of extended education is primarily to provide participants with possibilities to learn general or specific content and foster their' socioemotional and academic development and learning. In Sweden, the great majority of the younger pupils attend extended education in terms of the school-age educare centres (SAEC), where they meet teaching connected to four different central content defined in the curricula, of which one relates to games, physical activities and outdoor excursions. This study aims to explore and understand how outdoor excursions in school-age educare can be understood in terms of human practising. Based on observations and the philosophy of human practising four themes are discussed: meaningful challenges, content to learn, standards of excellence and time.

In this chapter, we discuss masculinity in relation to Swedish sports for children with refugee backgrounds. Specifically, we explore how the structure of sports shapes the distinct conditions for their athletic endeavours, including the traits associated with masculinity, which are perceived favourably in sports because they align with the physical and mental norms of male athletes, thereby reinforcing hegemonic masculinity. Moreover, we aim to show that perspectives valorising masculinity can frame children with refugee backgrounds as passive athletes who lack agency. Thus, we discuss two refinements of inclusivity in sports for children with refugee backgrounds in terms of (a) stereotyped notions of gender and refugees and (b) substantial links between desired masculinity and expectations of a perfect match with the Swedish sports system. 

Research has shown that peer victimization and bullying are common phenomena among pupils in different educational institutions, yet we know little about these issues in the educational context of the leisure-time centre. This study addresses leisure-time teachers' reflections on their work regarding peer victimization in the everyday practice of Swedish leisure-time centres. Methodologically, the study is based on written reflections from about a hundred teachers who have been participating in a continuing professional course. The results indicate that leisure-time teachers hold a quite unique professional position within the school organization due to their opportunities to work with pupils in various contexts during the day and their collaborations with other staff within the school organization. Yet the results also reveal a professional culture and material context where collaborations between different professionals are quite limited. The professional culture does not always support the leisure-time centre teachers' wish to have more opportunities to meet and discuss different issues with other staff members and to create a joint platform for collaboration and understanding about victimized pupils. It is hoped that this study will give professionals and policy makers new insights into how to make the leisure-time centre a safe and secure educational setting.

Drawing from data conducted through an action research project, the presentation will focus on the potential dilemmas school-age teachers face. The three dilemmatic spaces identified demonstrate positions and negotiations in relation to students, educators, and the school settings they inhabit. 

This article focuses on Swedish preschool managers’ views of their tasks and daily work: activities, conditions, challenges and ideas on leadership. Five preschool managers were asked to write diary notes during a couple of weeks at work. Through the analysis process, we were inspired by Yukl’s hierarchical behaviour taxonomy. The taxonomy divides leadership behaviours into four parts, task-oriented, relations-oriented, change-oriented and external. The taxonomy was used in terms of positions the managers navigate between, rather than considering them as being bearers of certain behaviours. Data indicate that these preschool managers mainly use the task-oriented and the relation-oriented position. We noticed that they also activate positions oriented to change and external contacts and network building, but to a significantly lesser extent. They solve all kind of problems and many of their stories are about how they strive to meet the needs of children, parents and staff.

One central content in the revised policy document of Swedish school-age educare is Games, physical activities, and outdoor excursions. The overall aim of the project is to understand and develop teaching with a focus on subject-specific knowledge in terms of selection and transformation of the central content Games, physical activities, and outdoor excursions.

The theoretical framework of the project is the concept of powerful knowledge (Young & Mueller, 2013), focusing on both content selection and transformation, concerned with how specific disciplinary knowledge can be made possible for pupils to acquire.

The collaborative project between the four teachers and the three researchers was based on a model of Action Learning described by Zuber-Skeritt (2002) as a way for practitioners to develop knowledge by acting, reflecting on practice, collaborating and learning from actual workplace issues.

A professional dilemmatic space is identified related to the difference from the compulsory education, and how selection and transformation of knowledge content is conditioned by certain aspects of governance, voluntariness and free time.

Despite the challenges of school-age educare our results also reveal possibilities, which offer unique conditions, and provide potential for pupils’ identity and knowledge development. This constitute important conditions also to develop education in compulsory school related to the ambition to empower pupils as the concept of powerful knowledge implies.