In a world which continuously becomes more globalised, the need to adapt one's language depending on context becomes increasingly important. This is acknowledged in the Swedish syllabus for the upper-secondary school, which emphasises communicative competence and the need to adapt to situation and hearer. This study uses a foundation based on politeness theory, where the act of requesting is considered a threat to the notion of face. The concept of face that is being used is based on the work of Brown and Levinson (1987) and the idea is that everyone has a positive- and negative face where the former is the need for one’s self-image to be respected and the latter is the freedom to act without imposition from others. By role-playing different scenarios, the participants of the study, all students of the English 7 course, were asked to perform requests which varied in imposition and which targeted hearers of different statuses. The results were analysed using a qualitative approach, which leads to the conclusion that half of the six participants adapted their language appropriately to the communicative situation. Those three had managed to show an increase in face-saving acts where the imposition was greater, or the hearer was of a higher status. That only half of the participants managed to do this shows a lack of success in teaching the students the necessary pragmatic skills encoded in the syllabus and more focused studies in this area are recommended to address this issue. Due to the small number of participants, further studies are needed to fully confirm the results presented in this study.

The teacher's situation in upper secondary school today is strongly influenced by several factors, both inside and outside the school's walls. One of these factors are the national steering documents that are designed to regulate the educational activities: school law, curriculum and other regulations. The professionalism in the knowledge-based work has changed from being regulated within the profession to be used as a tool for controlling service personnel by the organisation (Evetts 2009, 2013). Based on a professional theoretical perspective and with critical discourse analysis as a method, this study focuses on:  1. To investigate how the teachers’ assignment appears in the steering documents, and what kind of professionalism that is emerging.  2. To investigate the ability of a professional teacher to act based on what appears in the steering documents regarding the characteristics of a profession.  3. The various regulatory documents’ content and formulations linked to previous research, i.e. if it is possible to connect the analysis of control documents with national research on the teacher's professional role and assignment.  The result shows that signs of the teacher's autonomy, discretion, self-control and expertise - characteristics of a profession - are not present in the steering documents, and instead the discourse of control used by the organization seems to have taken a clear place. With documentation requirements, grades based on standardized knowledge requirements and focus on goal attainment, the governing documents seem to limit and shrink the teacher's discretion, which leads to the assumption that the teacher demands greater responsibility, but is given less opportunity to act as a professional.

Research has shown that poetry is a good tool to talk about and teach values. Skolverket has during the past 20 years stressed the importance of fundamental values through their documents and guidelines. In the Lgy 11 curriculum for English for Swedish upper secondary school, poetry is for the first time listed as a core content. Therefore this essay asks the critical question: Does teaching of poetry in English 6 textbooks live up to the fundamental values specified by Skolverket? In this essay two textbooks in English 6 have been studied along with literature on the topic. The essay uses a modified model presented by Gunnel Colnerud that differentiates the term fundamental values to be able answer the research question. The result shows that the two textbooks include poetry that talks about the fundamental values according to all the categories suggested in the model. The most frequent value in this study concerns students’ own opinions and their existential and religious questions.

This essay provides perspectives from four teachers with over eighty years combinedexperience on their choices of content of communications in English 7. The reason forconducting this study is that in English 7, which is the last English course in Swedish uppersecondaryschool, the teacher may face a diverse group of students with different programgoals, which may lead to different content needs. The aim of the study is to explore thisquestion, considering factors that affect choices in the course and what social domain it will besituated in.Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with four experienced teachers andanalyzed using qualitative content analysis. The study reveals that one strategy for solving theabove-mentioned problem is student influence, which, in short, means that the teacher lets thestudents pick content that matches the requirements in the content of communications. Otherfindings reveal that relationships with other teachers can affect the communication content incross-subject work, the teachers second subject and personal interests affect have differentamounts of influence, what method the teacher choose in course units and what part of thecurriculum the teachers consider a priority. This essay is useful for several purposes,policymakers will be able to see how teacher reason and practice particular parts of policydocuments, teachers will be able to ask themselves the same questions and reflect on whataffects their own teaching, and teaching students will be able to see how they can include theirpassion or knowledge into subject matter.

Based on a two month-long fieldwork in a Swedish upper secondary school, this thesis examines student attitudes and strives to increase the understanding of how they are formed, how students and teachers are positioned to the collective habitus, as well as how the students’ views of their attitudes relates to their practical expressions of them. The study is placed in a scientific debate regarding student resistance and conformity but shifts the focus from the implications they have to the motivations they are the result of. The analysis is grounded in research suggesting that the main factors for the formation of attitudes is the means to obtain what you desire as well as the freedom to choose that you desire. The conclusion settles around speculations to why the student attitudes look like they do, such as lack of symbolic capital or adoption of social roles given to them, as well as a need to fit in to the collective habitus or experiencing feelings of shame and hopelessness. It is also suggested that there is a disjuncture between the students’ narratives and practices of the attitudes and that the reason behind this might be feelings of shame and hopelessness created by not fitting in.

The aim of this study was to show whether there was a correlation between teachers’ opinions on the use of English in the EFL classroom and the students’ grades. The participants were four classes consisting of 75 students and four teachers from two Swedish upper secondary schools. A mixed-method was used consisting of two questionnaires and the students’ final grades from their English 5 course. The questionnaires were self-administrated and distributed via Google drive. Findings from this study indicate that there was no relationship between the teachers’ opinions and the students’ grades, but that Extramural English seems to affect the students’ grades. The extent of this has, however, not been established in this study. Further research within this area is needed.

With the rising societal awareness of inclusivity and accurate representation in films and other forms of media, it has become increasingly important that cultural and sexual diversity are not neglected in the material used in education, especially in English Language Teaching (ELT) where the chosen material is supposed to represent the whole English-speaking world. Previous research often focuses on the difference between national and international textbooks and compares the results between them. While some studies have focused on either cultural or sexual diversity, none have included both and there are not many studies that focus on Swedish ELT. Four textbooks were analysed in this study; Short Cuts to English 1 (2001), Streams 1 (2004), Pick & Mix 1 (2013), and Blueprint A (2017). Inclusivity and representation of cultural and sexual diversity were analysed using three models. Analytical methods focused on the aesthetic and sociological senses of culture, the circles of countries, and the levels of heteronormativity in the textbooks. Ourfindings show that there is a lack of inclusivity and representation of sexualities other than heterosexuality, and that even for culture there is a lack of inclusivity outside of English-speaking countries. Results indicate that the four textbooks used in this study did not display a high level of inclusivity regarding sexual diversity. Although still small, levels of inclusivity and representation of different cultures were greater.

The aim of this study was to investigate Swedish upper secondary school students’ attitudes toward English in school as well as to identify in what ways and to what extent they interact with English outside of school. An online questionnaire was used to collect data. The participants were three groups consisting of a total of 31 students at a school in northern Sweden. Findings from this study indicate that although the attitudes differ significantly within and between the different groups, the consensus was that English is a moderately difficult subject where they learn as much as or less than they learn outside of school. Additionally, all groups were shown to spend a lot of time engaging in a variety of different English activities outside of school, among which listening to music, using social media and watching different kinds of online visual media were the most prevalent.

Our study investigates the possibility of integrating ChatGPT, an AI text generative tool, as a didactic supporting tool within the Swedish upper-secondary school curricula. Particularly, it takes interest in the English foreign language teaching context and examines eight peer reviewed articles on the matter. The questions it aims to answer are: In light of existing research, 1) what are some of the implications of integrating ChatGPT as a didactic supporting tool in Sweden’s English as a Foreign Language (EFL) upper-secondary classroom and 2) how could this tool be incorporated successfully into the teaching process? In the results, the synthesis identifies ethical concerns, teacher beliefs and perspectives, and pros and cons of integration as the three primary themes and shows how 75% of the articles are concerned with the ethical implications of ChatGPT, hence requesting ethical frameworks and guidelines. Additionally, it identifies teachers' beliefs and attitudes on integration of AI as the biggest influencing factor on the integration of ChatGPT and that the dominant benefits of integration of ChatGPT are in student accessibility and reduced workload for teachers. Conversely, the concerns include those of unethical nature such as cheating, plagiarizing, and information security and accuracy. The discussion suggests that ChatGPT, as a didactic tool, is supported by the Swedish upper-secondary curricula. However, additional efforts are needed to ensure its safe and effective integration. The study concludes that ChatGPT, and other AI generative tools, could be implemented in the curricula, but before this is accomplished we require policies, guidelines, and ethical frameworks to ensure it can be done safely and effectively.

This thesis concerns processes of power relations in and about the science classroom. It draws on action research involving science and mathematics teachers in the Swedish upper secondary school (for students between 16 and 19 years). For the analysis, feminist post-structuralism, gender, and discourse theories (e.g. Butler and Foucault) are combined with critical action research methodology (e.g. Carr and Kemmis) and discourse analysis (e.g. Wetherell and Hall). The aim of the study is to make visible processes of inequality and to investigate how these are constructed in ‘talk’ or discourse about teaching and learning. The study grew out of teachers’ actions/small-scale projects in their own classrooms and so the study also investigates if and how action research can contribute to making visible, challenging and changing unequal practices and discourses of dominance. The first part of the thesis deals with this process and the analysis suggests that post-structural critiques of language and discourse are helpful in enabling actions to challenge inequities in the science classroom that currently exist. Five different articles constitute the second part of the thesis, two of which explore and survey research literature and argue for a need for more studies which investigate critically how science is shaped by specific social, cultural and historical contexts. Additionally, it is argued that it is important to focus not only on measuring differences among students but also on investigating how difference is constructed and how inequities can be challenged. The experiences and bodily feelings of what ‘race’ can do to gender (and vice versa) in a specific situation are recounted and examined in the third article which also invites different positions and complexity into the research field. The next two articles investigate how power and knowledge are produced, resisted and challenged in teacher and student talk within the action research project. The analysis draws on different discourses in contemporary Swedish society; for example a science discourse which produces school science (and its teachers and students) as high status, a gender equality discourse, a gender difference discourse, and an immigrant discourse which produces ‘immigrant students’ as problematic. Analysis of teacher talk reveals, for example, that long-established hierarchies and taken-for-granted values of school subjects in relation to gender reproduce advantage for some teachers but not for others, that teachers participate in the gendering of science subjects, and that changes in the teaching of science are resisted. Also students are located inside and outside the discourses they draw on, which qualifies or disqualifies them as ‘proper’ science students. Different borders are highlighted to show how students attach meaning to gender, social class, and ethnicity in different situations. Sometimes borders are produced inside bodies (the notion of the gendered brain, for example) and sometimes between cultures or according to family background. Resistance to dominant discourses is also visible in students’ talk and the ways in which teachers and students reproduce borders and exclusion in the science classroom through their practices. The analysis points out the need to initiate new research which can deconstruct among others, discourses of femininity and masculinity, the ‘immigrant student’ and school science.