Arts Education Practices in Scandinavian Schools

Project summary

This project aims to explore arts education practices in Norwegian and Swedish schools, more specifically to describe and discuss educational practices that take the arts seriously. Such practices can demonstrate possible spaces for the arts and aesthetic experience in schools, and thereby also contribute to improvement of teacher education in the arts. This project asks how arts education is carried out in selected schools, how actors perceive arts education practices in their schools, and how arts education practices are articulated and legitimated among different actors and in different contexts. The study is an ethnographic double case study where two cases, one primary school in Norway and one in Sweden, are studied in-depth. Methods used are observation, interviews, and informal conversations with teachers, pupils, and school leaders. The project focus is activities within the arts subjects, but also everyday school life, staff and team meetings, pupils’ musicals, voluntary rock bands, and community-directed activities have been observed. The project draws upon various relevant literature and earlier research on arts education, aesthetic experience, school development, and curriculum research. The project is on-going.