| Abstract: | This study examined the extent to which students fully embrace sloyd activities. Sloyd is a form of adventurous education in Sweden where school students take more control of the content and methods of learning as part of their weekly education. Hands on activities are often part of the adventure and it sometimes takes place outdoors. The study focused on two sloyd groups, one led by their school teacher in school time and one group who volunteered for sloyd out of school hours. Students in the school context were expected to follow the sloyd teacher's instructions and they were supposed to choose between an individual task or a group assignment at the beginning of the semester. The youngsters in the sloyd club context were expected to manage the sloyd activities themselves as and when they attended the voluntary sessions. That children and young people embrace sloyd is more or less taken for granted, whether it is part of students' school activities or youngsters' spare time activities. However, we found there was a variation in the extent to which students embraced sloyd from both the class based and voluntary groups. The class-based students' willingness to embrace sloyd depended on whether their activity assigned to them by the teacher was interesting to them. Although the out of school students voluntarily chose their activity, some of them still declined to embrace fully the sloyd approach due to a general lack of interest in the activities. Our conclusion is that sloyd leaders or facilitators need to consider individual differences to ensure sloyd is fully embraced. |
