Insourcing som samarbeid mellom kulturskole og grunnskole.

Abstract

The article explores collaboration between primary and lower secondary schools and schools of music and performing arts (‘kulturskole’), and examines how such cooperation can be understood as insourcing. Research in the field has shown that common collaboration models are most often based on an outsourcing idea, through the purchase of services. Such a model, in which teachers from schools of music and performing arts are hired to carry out specific tasks in primary/lower secondary schools, is not necessarily sustainable in the face of economic and cultural obstacles. Through a qualitative approach, this study therefore examines how collaboration between primary/lower secondary schools and schools of music and performing arts can be understood within an insourcing framework. Key actors who have experience with both conceptual and contextual conditions in collaboration between the schools have been interviewed, and a number of policy documents have also been studied. The usual understanding of insourcing implies using your own employees to solve tasks instead of outsourcing tasks by hiring external contractors. In this study, I argue that models based on insourcing, through a sustainable collaboration with the schools of music and performing arts, can contribute to lasting competence development and quality improvement in the arts and music subjects and important culture-building in primary/lower secondary school.