Purpose
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how child carers who work at daycare facilities create meaning in continuing and further education and training initiated by the employer. At the same time, the author aims to examine how the phenomenon of continuing and further education and training can be understood in the neoliberal welfare society.
Result
The discourse analysis shows that there was a development during the period of the VK Government, in which daycare facilities were transformed from being a place of child development to being a welfare service to look after children for their parents. The author also conveys a picture of child carers as a group left out in the cold and excluded from the modernisation of the public sector, as they are not able to live up to the requirements and expectations for self-realisation and changeability. Change is often a requirement in training and educational contexts, by which professional identity and meaning in the practical work are tested individually. In the analyses, practical changes and thereby generation of meaning are shown as identity work, and, as professional identity is anchored in pedagogical practice, practice is also where meaning is generated in the training and educational context.
Design
The dissertation consists of two analytical parts. The first part includes a discourse analysis of publications from the Danish VK Government (Denmark’s Liberal Party and the Conservative People’s Party) in the period 2001 to 2008, and the dominant discourses have been described and interpreted. In the second part, the author has carried out observations on continuing and further education and training programmes and has interviewed several of the participants. This data has been analysed to examine how child carers create meaning in their continuing and further education and training programmes.
References
Financed by
Graduate School in Lifelong Learning at Roskilde University and University College Capital