Introduction

Students have a need to think about philosophical life issues such as friendship, loneliness, justice, life, and death and they also have a need to talk about these life issues (Lilja, Buchardt, Kärnebro, Osbeck & Sporre,2020). Students also have a natural inclination to play and take part in playful activities. We suggest that the school age educare centre is a suitable arena where both needs can be accommodated. In this paper, we discuss the intimate relationship between the playfulness that appears inherent in the students' way of solving a particular task and how they simultaneously make use of their ‘practical intellect’. We intend to contribute to an expanded understanding of what constitutes intellectual activity and suggest that teachers and researchers can make use of this expanded understanding at the school age education centre.

Aim

The aim of this article is to develop an exploratory theoretical reasoning regarding the connection between (internal) intellectual processes and (external) practical observable actions of students participating in an activity. The question that is more specifically investigated is: How can students' play, in solving a task given within the framework of an adult-led activity, be seen as an expression of intellectual processes?

Methodology and theoretical framework

Theoretically a departure is taken in Gilbert Ryle's (1949/2000) discussion of how theory and practice are closely interwoven, and in Tomas Tempte's (1997) theory of the practical intellect. Our argumentation is supported by analyzing some empirical examples from an activity lead by one of the researchers, and in the analysis using concepts from Ryle and Tempte to make our point about the practical intellect to come alive.

Result

We put this reasoning as the basis for a normative argumentation that deals with the fact that the School age Educare could be a place that meets students' needs to investigate questions of a philosophical nature without, for the sake of it, renouncing the equally central needs of playful antics and movement. We then propose a pedagogical position where teachers let the students themselves design and explore activities that, according to them, can lead to philosophical conversations without either placing demands on the students' achievements or seeking to steer the activity towards specific educational outcomes.

In 2011 a new teacher education program, Extended school (180 credit), later reffered to School Age Education ( SAE, 180) was launched. Research interested in the conditions for the new profession found that many SAE teachers experience difficulties and operate in a structurally subordinate position in the workplace, struggling with an underdog mentality in relation to other groups of teachers (e.g., Haglund & Boström 2020). SAE teachers also construct their professional identity in a field of tension between an older social-pedagogical care tradition and new forms of governance based in a school subject-oriented educational tradition (Ackesjö et al. 2019). However, instead of focusing on how organizational and profession oriented frameworks shape the profession, we direct our gaze to the importance for the professional role that new SAE teachers attribute to their personal social commitment and their independent intellectual and moral reasoning.

Theory

School is regarded as an economically, socially and culturally contestedplace, inextricably linked to issues of power and interest. Rather than separated from the dynamics of politics, schools are are viwed as contested spheres that incorporate and express societal struggles over knowledge, forms of authority, values, roles, identities, etcetera (Giroux 1985). Teachers’ work accordingly can not be reduced to the instrumental task of implementing the curriculum and, like a technician, only enforcing educational decisions that have been made at a political and bureaucratic level.

Aim and research question

The aim of this paper is to examine how graduated SAE teachers’ reason about their personal motivations and positions in relation to curriculum management and educational policy decisions. More precisely, we examine the question:How do graduated SAE teachers’ reason about their own intellectual and moral agency in relation to curriculum governance and educational policy decisions?

Methodology

The selection of respondents is strategic and consists of 30 graduated SAEteachers’ who have an interest in societal and moral issues in relation to the teaching assignment. Data consist of 30 reflection texts and individual semi-structured interviews with four of the respondents. In the interpretation of the data a departure is taken in Donald Davidson’s (2001) Principle of Charity. This means that reflection texts and interview statements is analyzed in terms of rational actions from which conceptions and ideas about actual phenomena can be inferred, rather than, for example, reconstructing linguistic discourses. Fora detailed description of the theoretical perspective and analysis procedure, see e.g. Halldén, Haglund & Strömdahl 2008.

Result

We hope to contribute to the field with an interest in the profession’s mission by broadening the picture of which factors, according to teachers,that may shape teacher identities, teachers’ conceptions of the mission andview of the special character of the profession. We will give some examples of a professional self-image and an approach to the teaching role where intellectual and moral independence is prioritized as an in alienable part of one’s professional practice.