Nordic research has documented how majoritarian (heterosexual middleclass white) norms still prevail in social education (Heikkinen, 2016) causing children and youth to experience marginalization, stigmatization, and discrimination with the risk of impeding their well-being and life-trajectories.
Thus, one may argue that Nordic legislation and mainstream pedagogical values promoting equality and inclusion appear as truisms standing in the way of social justice (Askland, 2016; Clarup et al., 2020; Hamilton & Padovan-Özdemir, 2020). Hence, there is a need to reflect on the role of leisure-time pedagogy in relation to social justice.
As social justice is not restricted to questions of material deprivation or differences in income, but also considers other aspects of social life, such as cultures, identities, environments, and epistemologies (Schenker et al., 2019, p. 127), this symposium explores the pedagogical potential of norm-critique to revitalize social justice in Scandinavian leisure-time pedagogy.
Norm-critique draws on the past 20-30 years of queer theory developments (Britzman, 1995; Bryson & de Castell, 1993; Butler, 2007), has found a pedagogical translation famously advocated by Kevin Kumashiro (2009; 2000), and has been given a Scandinavian shape among Swedish scholars (Björkman et al., 2021; Bromseth & Björkman, 2019). At its core, norm-critique is about queering what is taken for granted including norms and normalcy. This entails moving the focus away from the Othered and minoritized to the First and majorized. With the words of Kumashiro, we need to go against common sense and make visible how “oppression can play out in our lives unnoticed and unchallenged” (2009, p. 37).
Accordingly, this symposium addresses the question of how to make majoritarian norms a visible object of investigation and reflection in leisure-time pedagogy to consciously and imaginatively build more socially just norms and pedagogical environments.
The three papers presented in this organized symposium build on the collective research project, Normcritical Perspectives in Leisure Pedagogy. In addition to an analytical literature review, this project has been designed as an intervention-based ethnography in collaboration with leisure pedagogues and youth groups in three Danish youth clubs. Accordingly, the three papers address and discuss different parts of the project material. The overall ambition of the project has been to identify existing leisure pedagogical work with diversity and equality, identify hegemonic norms and how they flesh out in the youth club, as well as developing insights into opportunities and obstacles for integrating norm-critical perspectives in leisure-time pedagogical practice.
The overall aim of this symposium is to sensitize social education research to the importance of norms and collectively discuss how to develop social justice-oriented leisure-time pedagogies that add to previous leisure-time pedagogical ideals of “the adapted natural child”, “the democratically competent child”, and “the life-long learning child” (Agerschou et al., 2021, p. 7). Accordingly, the symposium explores alternative research and leisure-time pedagogical paths for promoting social justice beyond liberal or inclusion-oriented notions of equality (Clarup et al., 2020).
The symposium featured:
1. Problems and Their Solutions – Typologizing
Scandinavian Leisure-Time Pedagogy Addressing Diversity (1990-2022) by Pia Rauff Krøyer & Marta Padovan-Özdemir
2. Norm clashes in the Youth Club - Exploring the
Epistemological Potential of Storytelling Workshops by Pia
Rauff Krøyer & Pernille Lykke Buch-Jensen
3. Making Norm-Critique Practically Meaningful
– Exploring Pedagogical Tensions Between Individual Freedom, Community Building,
and Structural (in)Equality by Stine
Del Pin Hamilton & Sebastian Nemeth
Discussants: Lotta Björkmann and Gro Hellesdatter Jacobsen