Introduction
This dissertation is about how staff in School-Age Educare settings (SAE) make meaning in collegial conversations. Work in SAE is organized in teams. Interaction and collaboration with colleagues are essential in work teams (Cooren et al, 2014). Many individuals are involved on a work team, and they have different assumptions and preferences as to how work is best planned, organized, and performed.
The knowledge that exists about SAE work and SAE staff's organization of everyday practice is largely based on how the work should be carried out and organized, i.e., on the basis of the governing documents and the SAE’s formal assignment description. But it is also important to increase knowledge about the SAE staff's meaning-making. In this dissertation meaning-making is understood as the colleagues' verbal negotiations of what the SAE’s everyday practice is and should be and who is responsible for realizing goals.
This dissertation studies two teams' collegial conversations that aim to develop the snack time routine. The ambition with snack time has been that children in SAE can prepare the meal, gather, talk and socialize with each other under more informal conditions than during school lunch (Andersson, 2013). Snack time can therefore be understood as a routine situation that aims at preparing the children to become independent and able to manage on their own in the afternoon. Recurring activities that aim to help children in transitions to new phases of life, are called priming events (Corsaro & Molinari, 2000). The snack time routine is preparing children for the transition from SAE to being home alone in the afternoons. Snack time is thus an important part of the SAE’s everyday practice and in the development of many children.
In collegial conversations, meaning is construed both regarding what happens during the activity and images of what should happen in it (cf. Vedder-Weiss et al., 2019), but SAE staff's opportunities to discuss and together make the SAE practice comprehensible and meaningful, are challenged by the lack of time for joint collegial conversations that characterize many SAE settings today (cf. Andersson, 2013; Haglund, 2018; Haglund & Boström, 2022). The opportunities for SAE staff to conduct SAE practice in the manner prescribed by the curriculum are also hampered x by the fact that there is a high staff turnover and by the fact that the group composition consists of staff with different levels of education (Haglund, 2018).
Aim and research questions
The aim of this dissertation is to analyze, interpret and understand how SAE teams collectively make meaning in and through collegial conversations about the snack time routine. The research questions are:
• What collective stories about the snack time routine and about the work team emerge?
• How do the employees relate to each other and to what is said about the snack time routine?
• How does the interaction in the conversations affect the stories? • What opportunities and limitations does the collective meaning-making imply for the work teams planning and organizing the SAE practice?
Theoretical framework
The theoretical framework in this thesis is positioning theory (Davies & Harré, 1990; Harré & van Langenhove, 1999; Tirado & Gálvez, 2008). Meaning making is carried out in and through negotiations of discursive construction in social interactions. The following core concepts have been used in this analysis:
Discursive constructions. Discursive constructions are made through speakers making redescriptions of the social reality. When we describe events in the past, we make rhetorical redescriptions affected by our moral assumptions. Discursive constructions are the pictures painted of the social reality in our stories of the past. In this way, different pictures by different artists are construed in a social interaction, based on the individuals’ own personal history and experiences.
Positioning: social interactions include positioning processes in which individuals relate to the Other. In conversations speakers make discursive constructions by telling personal stories that make the speakers’ social acts intelligible (van Langenhove & Harré, 1999:16). Positioning emerges in how and when speakers place themselves in a story being told in a conversation. Positioning is made with individuals’ sense of morality, rights and duties, revealing what is construed as right or wrong in the social reality.
Social force of/Speech act. In social interaction what is said are not only discursive statements, but what is said also makes the participants respond differently. In my analysis the social force of what is said is made visible in the response given to the speaker. For example, social forces contribute to re-producing and establishing different discursive constructions, and to questioning or ignoring others. Social forces thereby shift the conversation in different directions.
Storyline. Social interaction tends to revolve around a bigger narrative or storyline. Storylines show the bigger aspects of how people position themselves and others in social interactions (Herbel-Eisenmann, 2015:191). In the analysis storylines helped reveal those meaning making practices emerging in the collegial conversations that were studied.
These core concepts in positioning theory revealed results about how co-workers in one work team construe themselves as polyphonic institutional actors, and the other as unisonal institutional actors.
Method
This study is based on recordings from ten collegial conversations in two work teams in an SAE-setting. Participating work teams were those for K-1, including four co-workers responsible for the youngest children aged 6-7 years, and those for grades 2-3 consisting of four co-workers responsible for the oldest children in the SAE-setting, children aged 8-9 years. Co-workers in both work teams had different degrees of experience and qualifications.
Data was produced during three months in the early spring of 2019. The design of the collegial conversations was inspired by a research method called video stimulated reflection and a pedagogical method called pedagogical documentation, which is more common in preschool settings than in SAE. I wanted to combine research methods to help me explore co-workers meaning making, using a pedagogical method, while helping the work teams to improve the snack time routine. The collegial conversations were held in each work team once every two weeks. Work teams were responsible for filming a part of the snack time and bringing the film to the talks. The films functioned as stimuli in the collegial conversations and helped maintain focus on the specific situation. I had prepared a list of some areas that I wanted the work teams to discuss in the collegial conversations. I chose to do so to keep the conversations consistent in some way. Other than establishing these pre-determined areas, I tried to maintain an observational role in the conversations, meaning that I wasn´t active in the discussions. It was important to let the co-workers own the conversations and talk about issues important to them in the efforts to improve the snack time routine. In that way the design of the conversation opened up opportunities for the co-workers meaning making.
Recordings were transcribed and then analyzed with core concepts from positioning theory: positioning, discursive constructions, storyline, and speech acts. Analytic work began with a close analysis of how co-workers used the pronouns “I” and “we” in their speech, which underscored how they construed themselves as individuals and the work team as a collective. The analysis also showed what actions each pronoun was accountable for. It was a good start for the continuing process, focusing on the core concepts of positioning. Analysis highlighted two different meaning making practices, in the way co-workers in each work team positioned themselves and the Other in the collegial conversations.
Results
The results are presented in two sections in the thesis: Meaning-making in a polyphonic work team, in which results of K-1 collegial conversations are presented, and Meaning-making in a unisonal work team, focusing on 2-3’s meaning making.
In the first section, analysis shows the co-workers in K-1 construe the desirable snack time routine as an activity of peace and quiet, giving the children and staff time to calmly chat with friends and recover from a busy school day. But that image contrasts with how staff construes the situation in the canteen during snack time. The storyline about snack time that appeared in analysis is an image of a problematic activity urgently in need of changes. The problems articulated are mainly about children misbehaving. This work team is construed as having difficulties acting in the SAE-practice. The work team is construed as having limited agency, unable to handle the problems that need to be handled (large groups of children, lacking staff, insufficient space and so on). The individual co-worker is construed as having more possibilities for action despite the troubled collective work team. This is how they discursively construe themselves in stories about the snack time routine. But these constructions are being negotiated in the collegial conversations.
Patterns of negotiations are revealed in analysis. Co-workers in K-1 repeatedly return to the construction of the problems in their discussions. When they articulate different problems or obstacles in the everyday practice, they can unite and agree with each other. But when they start expressing what they see as solutions or explaining things, they no longer cooperate. Instead, theco-workers tend to tell their own stories about their own experiences. It seems difficult for co-workers in the K-1 work team to come together and learn from each other. The storyline about the work team is an illustration of a polyphonic work team, making meaning through many different voices in negotiations.
The second section of results focuses on, meaning making in the other work team, 2-3. The 2-3 team also construe the desirable snack time routine as an activity of peace and quiet. Children’s thriving and recreation are what the work team is striving for. The current situation in the canteen is construed as a well-functioning activity, and the children are construed as doing the best they can to provide a peaceful setting for chatting with their friends. The few problems articulated are addressed to the work team as organizers and providers of the snack time routine. The 2-3 work team construe themselves as a likeminded collective, taking action in the same way in the everyday practice. Co-workers agree on and confirm different interpretations expressed in the conversations. The individual co-workers are construed mainly as actors in the ongoing conversation, by negotiating how different situations are perceived.
Results show patterns of negotiating in the 2-3 work team. One pattern is that confirmation from colleagues is important in negotiations. An utterance needs to be confirmed and recognized to be legitimate for discussion. If recognition fails to materialize, the utterance is ignored or neglected. In these processes the co-workers with more experience seem to have the power to define and approve what can be negotiated and what cannot. Co-workers also tend to start discussions by confirming that the specific situation is working fine. Such confirmation invites a discussion about what could be perceived as a problem and whether that might be a problem or not. Co-workers end up returning to the confirmation of the discussed situation as well-functioning – often construed as even better or desirable than in the beginning of the discussion. A pattern of reproducing the well-functioning snack time is revealed in the analysis. The 2-3 team also reproduces the constructions of themselves as a likeminded collective, by confirming each other’s stories and expressing one way of acting in the everyday practice. The storyline of the 2-3 team depicts them as a unisonal work team, making meaning with one unified voice in negotiations.
Discussion and conclusion
A discussion is performed based on the main results of the thesis.
Results show two different meaning making practices appear in the two participating work teams, even though they work in the same SAE-setting. Meaning making practices not only include reproducing different constructions, but also challenging and negotiating different meanings.
The unisonal storyline and the polyphonic storyline, are made visible in positioning analysis, even though work teams are situated at the same SAE-setting. There is reason to argue that collegial interactions and relationships are important in co-workers meaning making of the studied conversations. The work team that construed a xiv storyline of a unisonal and well-functioning work team is negotiating the experiences of the everyday practice, to make experiences fit in to one predetermined way of understanding situated events. In negotiations social forces dismiss or ignore divergent interpretations, making transformative negotiations difficult to achieve. The work team that construed a storyline of a polyphonic work team, create a different meaning-making practice, in which several interpretations of social reality are negotiated. As the opposite of the unisonal work team, the polyphonic one doesn’t have a predetermined way of understanding situated events, leading to negotiations of what interpretation is most legitimate and how problems should be solved. Positioning is a struggle to make one’s voice heard, limiting possibilities for co-workers to listen to each other. Therefore, making transformative negotiations is possible, but rare in the polyphonic meaning making practice.
The collective meaning-making that emerges through analysis has three characteristics, which take different forms in the polyphonic and the unisonal storylines: reproduction, superficial unity in the work team and intersubjectivity. The polyphonic meaning-making reproduces constructions of the snack time routine as problematic. The unisonal meaning-making reproduces constructions of the snack time routine as well-functioning.
The conclusion is that SAE staff members collegial conversations enable meaning-making that reproduces the employees’ constructions of the snack time and the SAE practice. To enable productive collegial conversations, where joint meaning-making leads to new and in-depth understanding of the events of everyday practice, work teams need to be stable over time and given time to continuously reflect on their practice.
Trollhättan: Högskolan Väst , 2022. , p. 242