U-Tel (South Korea)

This article sheds light on policy enactment in response to political goals of widening participation in Swedish community schools of music and arts (kulturskola). The data for this article is based on interviews with five principals from five such schools. The principals’ accounts were interpreted in a discourse psychological framework and six different ways to position themselves as leaders were found: The Trend-spotter, The Progressive Enforcer, Friend of Long-term Learning, The Implementer, The Critic and The Chameleon. The position The Trend-spotter and The Progressive Enforcer are associated with a common tendency to pronounce the schools’ mission to reach new target groups and a focus on new marketing and teaching methods. The Friend of Long-term Learning and The Critic guard long-term and in-depth learning and sufficient resources to achieve it. The principals’ policy enactment can be described as a balancing act defined by loyalty to local political goals versus loyalty to learning goals. The principals’ positioning in relation to the teachers express loyalty as well as a marked tendency to urge the teachers to renew the teaching methods. Whether the principals position themselves as Implementer or Critic is interpreted as depending on allocated resources. The Chameleon strives to integrate different positions. These positions are discussed relative to widening participation and institutional discourses such as breadth versus depth discourse and management discourse versus a discourse for learning.

The intercultural art project Fargespill (Kaleidoscope) is a part of the schools of music and performing arts in several municipalities, and the Fargespill Foundation cooperates with the Norwegian Council for Schools of Music and Performing Arts on distributing licenses to run Fargespill and Flere Farger projects. This paper considers possibilities and limitations regarding Fargespill as an including and empowering arena within schools of music and performing arts. The paper shows how institutionalization processes in the school of music and performing arts and Fargespill tend to generate inherent bulkheads between main activities and diversity desired. It is an invitation to reflect on how analysis and awareness of such processes may inform including strategies for structure and management in schools of music and performing arts.

This article discusses drama and theatre in the Swedish schools of arts and how the education may influence students from a perspective of democracy, based on the educators’ view of their subject. Drama and theatre are to be viewed as a distinct group activity in the schools of arts, which gives students many opportunities to participate in democratic processes. The article explores how educators describe their own teaching and how they relate to such processes. Data from a large survey aimed at educators in drama and theatre in Swedish schools of arts are illuminated by Dewey’s concepts of intelligent action and the common good. The results show that the nature of the teaching in many ways corresponds to intelligent action since drama and theatre provide rich opportunities for reflection in action. According to the educators, one of the aims of their teaching is to develop democratic citizens. Democratic aspects are woven into the educator’s relationship to the group and each individual participant, which is an important aspect of Dewey’s concept the common good. On the other hand, educators see it as a challenge to respond to individuals with special needs. Most of the previous studies of drama and theatre in the schools of arts, as well as the survey study on which this text is based, have primarily taken on the educators’ perspective. We believe that it is of utmost importance that children’s own voices are given space in continued research on an activity they themselves have chosen to perform in their spare time, in a context where they are both students and co-creative agents.