KARNEVAL I KLASSRUM –KUNSKAP Pà HJUL

Abstract
Carnival in classroom, knowledge on wheels. Pupils’ encounter with
clown studied through the lenses of narrative method with poetic
ethnography
The aim of this study is to contribute to the knowledge about learning in and
through art related to pupils’ study processes developing clown characters in
secondary school. The pre understanding of this qualitative piece of micro
ethnographic research is that the elaboration of clown has openness to play,
creative activity and imagination. The art form clown inspires and motivates.
The clown character creates a kind and friendly atmosphere, calls upon
smile, which promotes learning. It is an art form promoting deep and
personal reflection and evoking questions regarding identity formation. The
pre understanding finally is that existential themes are brought to articulation
in the art form clown.
The problem formulation for the hermeneutic phenomenological study is an
exploration of the meaning potential of an arts educational work with clown
from the pupils’ as well as the teacher’s perspective.
The study elaborates the following research questions:
1.) How are the pupils staging themselves in the work with clown?
a) How are they constructing the clown character?
b) How do they reflect upon their construction?
c) What are the characteristics of the working process in the
elaboration of clown?
2.) What is characteristic of the teacher’s contribution to the arts
educational work?
3.) What is characteristic of the meaning making in the elaboration of
clown?
One group of 21 pupils and their drama teacher in a Swedish secondary
school in six workshops (each one 90 minutes) elaborating the clown theme
is the group under study through video observation, interviews, students’
logs and drawings, teacher log and researcher’s field notes.
The theoretical framework comprises three perspectives on clown: a
perspective on the culture of carnival, a drama education perspective and a
performance perspective. Through a content analysis of texts about clown a
set of characteristics for the clown is used as analytical concepts in the
subsequent analysis of the pupils’ working process when they create three
clown characters: August, the white clown and the bag lady. The results are
presented as fictive narratives built on the video observations and the