This study explores how Swedish children aged ten to twelve perceive their neighbourhoods as spaces for meaningful leisure. Drawing on group interviews with 50 children residing in areas with varying characteristics, the research applies the concepts of ‘children’s places’ and ‘places for children’ to analyse how children navigate and interpret their local environments. While many children expressed satisfaction with nearby facilities, such as playgrounds and sports fields, they also highlighted limitations in variety, maintenance, and age-appropriate challenges. The analysis reveals how children’s perceptions of their neighbourhoods’ range of leisure activities spans beyond the actual supply of leisure places. Access to these leisure places is affected by different sets of normative perceptions of (a) availability for the specific age group, (b) availability and maintenance and (c) availability and proximity. This study offers new insights into the everyday lives of Swedish ten-to-twelve-year-olds and their everyday lives. It builds on previous research on children’s and young teenager’s microgeographies, by highlighting the importance and hindrance of children’s sense of availability and access to the range of activities offered by the community. The contribution of this paper is mainly the insights of the complexity of this particular age group and how being in the middle years and the increased awareness that comes with that is affecting children’s microgeographies beyond what is there.

The aim of this study is to contribute knowledge about how children aged 10 to 12 describe their leisure time, and how their accounts of what they do, what they want to do, and what they perceive as available to them can be understood in relation to age as a social category.

Drawing on qualitative interviews with children aged 10 to 12 who attend open leisure programmes, and guided by a ‘doing age’ framework, this study approaches age as a socially constructed and negotiated concept shaped through everyday practices. The analysis reveals that children position themselves as being at an ‘in-between’ stage, neither ‘little kids’ nor teenagers, and use leisure spaces to define what is appropriate for ‘kids their age’. Two key processes underpin this construction. Firstly, the children navigate a balance between dependence and independence, not by rejecting care, but by embracing responsibility and making informed choices. Secondly, they express a desire for progression, seeking more advanced or age-appropriate activities. Together, these processes reflect their efforts to be recognised as capable and maturing individuals.

Children also describe leisure spaces as age-coded, distinguishing between environments perceived as ‘for kids’ and those offering more autonomy or challenge. Their connections to these spaces are shaped by how well they align with their self-perceived age. Their experiences highlight a form of interdependence, where autonomy, trust, and care are continuously negotiated in both material and relational contexts.

Syftet med studien är att bidra med kunskap om hur barn i åldern 10–12 år beskriver sin fritid, samt hur deras berättelser om vad de gör, vill göra och uppfattar som tillgängligt kan förstås i relation till ålder som social kategori. Med utgångspunkt i kvalitativa intervjuer med barn i öppna fritidsverksamheter och ett teoretiskt ramverk kring ”doing age” betraktas ålder som ett socialt konstruerat och förhandlat fenomen som formas genom vardagliga praktiker.

Analysen visar att barnen positionerar sig mellan ”småbarn” och tonåringar och använder fritidsmiljöer för att definiera vad som är lämpligt för deras ålder. Två centrala processer ligger till grund för denna konstruktion: dels en balans mellan beroende och självständighet, där barnen omfamnar ansvar och fattar informerade beslut, dels en vilja till förändring, där de söker mer avancerade eller åldersanpassade aktiviteter. Barnen beskriver också fritidsmiljöer som ålderskodade, där de skiljer mellan småbarnsmiljöer och sådana som erbjuder större självständighet eller utmaning. Barnens relation till dessa miljöer formas av hur väl de överensstämmer med deras egen uppfattning om sin ålder. Deras erfarenheter synliggör hur ålder förhandlas i både materiella och relationella sammanhang.

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.

Artificiell intelligens integreras alltmer i vårt samhälle, vilket är ett av skälen till att högre utbildning behöver anpassa sig efter denna samhällsförändring. Det innebär också att alternativa diskurser till en förbjuden AI-användning har trätt in på spelplanen för utbildning, vilket i sin tur ger behov av nya kriterier eller spelregler. Det är mitt i den förändringsprocessen som den här studien har genomförts. Syftet är att undersöka hur handledares sociala praktiker förändras när studenter tillåts använda AI för sitt examensarbete. Kvalitativa intervjuer med åtta handledare har analyserats med hjälp av kritisk diskursanalys, vilket resulterade i fyra praktiker: prövande praktik, stödjande praktik, differentierande praktik och kontrollerande praktik. I analysen framkom även en spänning mellan de två första praktikerna, vilka ger uttryck för en mer framtidsorienterad, progressiv syn på examensarbetet, och de två sistnämnda praktikerna, som mer handlar om att bevara det traditionella sättet att tänka kring examensarbetet. Resultaten visar att AI’s inträde på den spelplan som är examensarbetet, tenderar att väcka frågor om hur universitetslärare ser på utbildning och kunskap. Vad examensarbetets sociala praktik blir när AI tillåts är inte något givet eller självklart. Istället prövas gränser och teknik och görs användbart inom examensarbetets rådande regler och riktlinjer.

This collaborative article explores child-centredness as a theoretical and methodological concept by asking what it means to centre children in research. The collaborative format offers a heterogeneity of voices on the concept as the contributing authors write, critically and creatively, from a range of different interdisciplinary research perspectives. Writing from the departure point of the key role of child-centred approaches within the field, including recent discussions concerning the need to decentre children/childhood, the goal is to spur and contribute to discussions on the possibilities and challenges of the concept, as well as new ways of approaching it.

Vardagen i fritidshemmet är ofta hektisk och händelserik. För att kunna erbjuda en meningsfull verksamhet kan det vara nödvändigt att stanna upp och tänka igenom vad barn och vuxna är med om.Den här boken handlar om arbetslagsarbete i fritidshem, med särskilt fokus på reflekterande arbetssätt, samtalande och lärande...[Bokinfo]

This paper examinesthe relationship between explicit and implicit aspects of communication at work and especially how discursive change is enabled in that relationship. The studied context is collegial conversations in Swedish School-age Educare settings. The purpose is to elaborate onpractice-based perspectives on reproducing and changing discoursein communication at work, contributing to productive teacher discourse.This paperproposestwo aspects contributing to reproduction of discourse: shallow consensusand intersubjectivity; and two aspects enabling discursive changein collegial conversations at work: multivoicingand revisiting events. Identified aspects of (re)production in collegial conversation shows positioning and constructions of group belonging in work teamsare important to make conversations productive.This paper contributes to elaboration on the literature of collegial discourse and communication and literature onteam-based work

The aim of this study is to gain knowledge of how School-Age EduCare (SAEC) staff in andthrough collegial conversations construe a child/children. Collegial conversations with two SAECstaff teams were analyzed using the theoretical concepts from the fields of discourse analysis andsystemic functional grammar. The results show that children were repeatedly construed as a groupsubject by the staff and more rarely as individual subjects. The SAEC staff construed the children asgroup subjects in four different ways: as general groups, as pre-determined groups, as quantity-relatedgroups, and as behavior-related groups. The children who were construed as individual subjectswere mainly the ones who diverged from the group, often in negative ways.