Folk high school teachers work many hours in fluid ways with no clear distinction between working hours and leisure time. Pedagogically, they are often described as being value driven and participant focused. Creating interests, involving, motivating, giving recognition to, challenging, and creating possibilities for participants to grow as human beings is important for the teachers. In this chapter, we mobilise empirical examples to explore if these aspects are connected to a particular understanding of what learning is and should be, a mutual/embedded exploration process where both participants and teachers are challenged and grow as persons and where collaboration and the collective are prerequisites. This particular perspective on learning appears far removed from the traditional subject-based classroom of child education. We describe and discuss the work of folk high school teachers in Sweden, and problematise the work conditions of this diverse group of teachers.

Detta kapitel behandlar begreppet normkritik och vad det innebär att anlägga ett normkritiskt perspektiv inom utbildning. Frågor som diskuteras är vad normer är, hur de skapas och varför det är viktigt att synliggöra och utmana dem. I grund och botten är det en fråga om makt, om att privilegieras eller marginaliseras. Efter en genomgång av olika förståelser av normkritiska perspektiv redogör kapitlet för två nyligen avslutade forskningsprojekt för att visa olika sammanhang och sätt som normkritik kan användas på inom såväl forskning som utbildning.

I den här avhandlingen undersöks den svenska folkhögskolans engagemang i global (o)rättvisa, dess uppkomst och nutida verksamheter, med fokus på transnationella kurser i global utveckling. Studien behandlar sociala, politiska och historiska aspekter av engagemanget, med folkhögskolan som utbildningsinstitution i centrum. De teoretiska perspektiven är inspirerade av kritisk diskursanalys, postkolonial och feministisk teori samt kultursociologi. Resultaten visar hur utvecklingsfrågor sedan femtiotalet har vuxit fram som ett viktigt bildningsområde som införlivats i folkhögskolans institutionella identitet, samt hur detta bildningsområde har förhandlats och förändrats över tid. Genomgående präglas det transnationella engagemanget av en tilltagande reflexivitet kring att vara både inbegripen i, och aktivt emot, en orättvis världsordning, som i sin tur villkorar vad som blir (o)möjligt att göra i de folkbildande praktikerna. Avhandlingen gör gällande att det inte finns en berättelse om folkhögskolans engagemang för global rättvisa. Tvärtom är det flera berättelser, som uttrycks olika beroende på hur, när och var kampen för global rättvisa utförs. Att vara både ”i och emot”, innebär här både ett reproducerande av rådande maktförhållanden, men också omförhandlande, navigerande och avlärande av hegemonisk kunskap. I linje med detta förändras också folkhögskolan som institution, i takt med sin tid. 

This thesis explores the Swedish folk high schools’ (FHS) engagement with global (in)justice, its emergence and contemporary practices, with a focus on transnational courses in global development. The study addresses social, political and historical aspects of this engagement, concentrating on the FHS as an educational institution. The theoretical perspectives are inspired by critical discourse analysis, postcolonial and feminist theory and cultural sociology. The results show how development issues have emerged, since the 1950s, as an important educational area that has become incorporated into the institutional identity of the FHS, and how this educational area has been negotiated and changed over time. Overall, this transnational engagement is characterized by a growing reflexivity of being both involved in, and actively opposing, an unfair world order, which in turn conditions what becomes (im)possible to accomplish through educational practices. The thesis concludes that there is no single story about FHS engagement for global justice. On the contrary, the stories are diverse, and are expressed differently depending on when, how and where the struggle for global justice is performed. Being both "in and against" here involves the reproduction of existing power relations, as well as renegotiating, navigating and unlearning of hegemonic knowledge. In line with this, the FHS is also changing as an institution, in step with its time

Nordic popular education (folkbildning) has a history of emancipatory endeavours. At the same time it has also been involved in, and reproducing, different structures of power. By studying participants on a Folk High School course on global development, where intersectional power orders are critically challenged while also permeating and enabling the course, this article addresses this paradox. Interviews are analysed with tools from critical and cultural sociological theory. The purpose of the study is to deepen the understanding of the conditions and significance of critical popular education. The stories depict how the courses become alternatives to more male-dominated elite courses at the Folk High School; how class is mirrored as the course becomes a tool for either upward class mobility or (middle) class reproduction; and how a moral subjectivity is created through a relation to, and distancing from, discourses of tourism and traditional aid.

Folk High Schools in Sweden have a long history of engaging internationally, especially as regards courses on development studies (u-landslinjer) that emerged in the late sixties. The purpose of this article is to track some of the dis- courses about internationalisation, development and aid that preceded those courses, as well as to scru- tinise ideas of the role of the Folk High School (folkhögskola) in the emerging field of development aid. Analysing material from Tidskrift för svenska folkhögskolan (Journal of the Swedish Folk High School) between 1950 and 1969, the study shows that the discourse on internationalism takes its starting point from an already established nationalism and nordism. National security also arises as an argument for engaging in development issues. The analysis also shows that there is a shift in the role of the Folk High School in the evolving development work; from “helping” to “advocating.” The results raise questions about how we can understand today’s Folk High School courses on global development against the background of the debates of the fifties and sixties.