Gränser : En studie av den estetisk-praktiska miljöns pedagogisk-terapeutiska grundegenskaper utgående från två verksamheter: Hagastiftelsens verkstäder och Kristofferskolans bokbinderi

Sammanfattning: Borderlands. A study of the aesthetic-practical environment, its pedagogical and therapeutical properties based on the outline of two practices/institutions: the workshops at Hagastiftelsen and the bookbindery at the Kristofferschool. The perspective on education, pedagogy and therapy taken is an existential one where the main aims of an educational-therapeutic intervention is to support biographical development and integrity. In the process action research in my own bookbinding workshop as well as hermeneutic research at the workshops at Hagastiftelsen where adults with autism and other neuropsychological disorders work have been the sources of primary empirical data. Secondary sources are patient-histories written by Oliver Sacks as well as autobiographical narratives of some adults with autism. The phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, aesthetic philosophy of Schiller, narrative studies and Antonovskys concept of sense of coherence (SOC) have been used as interpretive theories to understand the research data. After outlining the two practices/institutions the paper is concerned with analysing a number of basic properties concerning the pedagogically and therapeutically oriented workshop as a space for aesthetic-practical activity: instrument/tool, beauty, rhythm and work. By incorporating the standpoint epistemology of autism the issues of identity-formation and biography have also been given a more inclusive treatment. A discussion regarding aesthetic-practical environments, their development, comparisons between them and their evaluation follows. In the final part of the study an outline for further research and development is presented.