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Discourses on lifelong and lifewide learning portray everyday life as a pedagogical space where requirements for how to preferably improve oneself through learning are highly significant. Drawing upon the notion of governmentality, it could be argued that techniques operate within a range of practices to shape, foster and stabilize the assumed adequate ways to perform. Using that particular lens, the case of parenting was investigated to accentuate selves and self-work in narrations on family life in Norway. The analysis illustrates how the techniques of activation and comparison are at work to define, fashion and develop the responsible, involved and attentive parental self, thereby signifying pedagogical claims one should aspire to. However, how this is accomplished differs slightly within the social contexts of family life. Parenting, then, may be discussed as a powerful educative practice for fabricating capable and wellbehaved citizens of contemporary times. ; publishedVersion ; © 2014 The author. Under a (CC BY-NC) license.

Discourses on lifelong and lifewide learning portray everyday life as a pedagogical space where requirements for how to preferably improve oneself through learning are highly significant. Drawing upon the notion of governmentality, it could be argued that techniques operate within a range of practices to shape, foster and stabilize the assumed adequate ways to perform. Using that particular lens, the case of parenting was investigated to accentuate selves and self-work in narrations on family life in Norway. The analysis illustrates how the techniques of activation and comparison are at work to define, fashion and develop the responsible, involved and attentive parental self, thereby signifying pedagogical claims one should aspire to. However, how this is accomplished differs slightly within the social contexts of family life. Parenting, then, may be discussed as a powerful educative practice for fabricating capable and wellbehaved citizens of contemporary times. (DIPF/Orig.)

The article focuses on the opening sequences in qualitative research interviews and in particular examines the interactive work of achieving 'topic talk'. Using the concepts of activity types, activity frames and contextualization cues, a close-up analysis of eight focus-group interviews and 12 semi-structured interviews was conducted. The findings show that the interviewees display familiarity with the interview as an activity type and how it is to be socially organized. However, to create a joint focus of attention, thereby getting off to an adequate start, the participants also need to agree upon an activity frame and a distribution of positions to achieve a frame switch, which here emerges through the interactional work of announcing, customizing and approving. Accordingly, by highlighting the communicative and practical circumstances of qualitative research interviewing, the opening sequences are considered to be a delicate interactive affair, however, where the interviewer has to take the main responsibility.