Børns dannelsesarbejde: Demokrati, fællesskaber og stedets betydning i en landsbyskole

Amid increasing centralization and standardization of the Danish education system, the role of schools in rural areas risks being overlooked or reduced to a logistical concern rather than recognized as pedagogical and democratic resource. The national education discourse has long been shaped by a metrocentric logic, where urban ideals of mobility, performance, and academic progression operate as normative benchmarks. In both Danish and international research, this has contributed to a persistent bias that frames the rural as static, traditional, or as a marginal version of modern childhood.<br/>This dissertation positions itself critically within this field by examining how a school situated in a rural community can function as a site for democratic education—not despite, but precisely because of its embeddedness in local life. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from everyday life sociology, figurational sociology, critical educational theory, and spatial theory—alongside inspiration from critical place-based pedagogy and anthropology, the study attends to the practices through which children participate, act, and are formed in relation to place, school, and community. The inquiry is grounded in an ambition to understand children's democratic formation as situated, embodied, and relational—and particularly how this formation takes shape within the Danish rural context.<br/><br/>The dissertation is guided by two research questions:<br/>1. How are children’s opportunities for democratic participation and formation expressed in the everyday practices of a village school?<br/>2. How might Åben Skole (Open School)—as a collaborative practice between school and local community—and Landsbyordningen (the Village School Model) as an organizational framework, contribute to local anchoring and development in a rural context?<br/><br/>The first question explores how democratic experiences, and participatory possibilities unfold in children's daily school lives. The school is seen as part of the village’s social fabric—a place where children continuously negotiate norms, rights, and belonging in mundane situations. The second question investigates the school's relationship with the surrounding community and examines how collaboration models like Åben Skole and structural arrangements like Landsbyordningen can foster both local development and meaningful educational spaces that connect formation to place and belonging.<br/><br/>Methodologically, the dissertation is anchored in a combination of ethnographic fieldwork and critical utopian action research. Ethnographic methods—such as participant observation and focus group interviews—provide access to children’s lived experiences and the microdynamics of social life. The Fremtidsværksteder (Future Workshops), central to the action research component, serve both as method and participatory practice, in which children and local adults co-create visions for school and community. This dual approach makes it possible to produce analyses that both document, challenge, and open new spaces for action within the school context.<br/>The dissertation concludes that children’s democratic formation in a village school primarily unfolds in relational micro-situations of everyday life—not through formal structures like student councils. It is through play conflicts, lunchtime conversations, and social negotiations that children exercise judgment and develop what Oskar Negt terms Skelneevne - the ability to discern. Drawing on Dewey and Rancière, the analysis illustrates how democracy in schools is not merely something taught, but something enacted—through participation in complex and sometimes unpredictable practices where meaning and power are continuously negotiated.<br/>In this context, the concept of children’s formation work is developed as an analytical lens to understand the bodily, linguistic, and relational practices through which children negotiate belonging, recognition, and meaning. Formation work does not appear as linear learning but emerges as a situated and often fragile practice marked by both barriers and potential for democratic experience. This becomes particularly visible in the school’s informal spaces, where children - with and without adult intervention - navigate and contest roles, boundaries, and communities.<br/><br/>The dissertation further introduces the concept of place negotiation to grasp how children actively create, interpret, and contest the meanings of place. Drawing on Doreen Massey’s relational concept of place and Michel de Certeau’s focus on everyday practice, the analysis highlights how place is not merely a backdrop for children’s lives, but a co-constituting actor in their formation. These place negotiations appear both in children’s narratives about neighborhood myths and dangers and in their visions for the role of the school in the village. It becomes evident that children associate place with both safety and critique, and that their orie...