The general aim of this thesis is to examine and explain how education fosters future citizens when Swedish upper secondary schools work actively with entrepreneurship in school. Toward this aim, two research questions are asked: How are students governed and how do students govern when focus is on entrepreneurship in school? How do teachers relate to entrepreneurship in school? The study took place in a school development program with a focus on teachers developing their abilities and working with entrepreneurship in schools. Four studies presented in four articles form the cornerstones of the thesis. The empirical data was collected during 2013– 2014 in three of the participating schools. Different methods were used. The first step was reading and analysing policy documents, followed by observations in the classrooms, interviews with the teachers with the help of performance maps, and interviews with the students in gendered focus groups. In total, 14 teachers and 90 students were involved in the study. The schools were geographically spread and represented both public and independent schools. For this study an abductive approach was used, which means that the empirical data were collected and first studied unbiased. Various theoretical models were chosen to find answers to the specific research questions; thus, a connection between the theory and the empirical data was made. The first article examines whether a citizen with entrepreneurial abilities is fostered in school when the concept of entrepreneurship has a place in the curriculum. This article also analyses the curriculum (Gy11) and more specifically what can be read under the heading The Task of the School. The main result from this study shows that students are emphasising entrepreneurial abilities over other abilities. The second article draws a comparison between John Dewey’s ideas of progressive education from the early 1900s and the teaching methods that have come to be advocated for developing student ́s entrepreneurial abilities. The main purpose of progressive education is to foster a democratic citizen; here I could observe that techniques for teaching entrepreneurship are comparable to progressive education, but the purpose is not the same. The purpose of entrepreneurship in school is primarily to foster individuals who are active and responsible for their own future. Michael Foucault's concept of governmentality is the focus of article three, which explores how students are governed and shaped when entrepreneurship in school is emphasised, and it explores whether boys and girls are governed in different ways. The analysis of the result indicated that the students were governed in three different ways in the three school contexts, and girls and boys were governed in different ways both among the schools and within the schools. The fourth article addresses how the teachers relate to entrepreneurship in schools in light of new reforms, marketization, more regulation and the demands of being an entrepreneurial teacher. The result shows three narratives: the cool teacher, the stressed teacher, and the frustrated teacher, each handling entrepreneurship in school in different ways. This thesis shows that the entrepreneur has come to be presented as a hero and entrepreneurship as a solution to cope with challenges—to the global economy, but also for coping with ourselves and our own lives. It also shows that fostering a democratic citizen is subordinate to fostering citizens with entrepreneurial abilities, as the regime of truth is to become the entrepreneur. The students are both governed and governing toward that direction. And even if teachers have different ways of approaching entrepreneurship in schools, the will to be the entrepreneurial teacher and to foster entrepreneurial citizens is clear.

Social constructivism, known as Vygotskian theory, has been implicated in improving spoken language skills of upper-secondary school students. This qualitative study aims to investigate the perspectives of students regarding the teachers’ use of humour in ESL lessons both in Italy and Sweden. A secondary aspect of the study was to assess the use of humour in second language acquisition related to language learning and communicative competence based on dialogism and interaction. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 participants (5 males and 5 females from each of the respective countries). After analysis using phenomenography, results indicate that humorous dialogic instruction and interaction, as well as non-verbal forms of humour such as gesticulation and facial expression, have the possibility to dramatically increase the focus and interest in lesson content which facilitates better communicative understanding of English. Immediacy is perceived to improve feelings of well-being and harmony within the classroom. Humour and openness are considered important and necessary factors in improving motivation and self-belief during oral tasks as facilitated an effective, communicative learning climate. The study also proposes that there are four factors (teacher, student, subject and task) which affect learning processes, and moderation of humour, the fifth factor, acts as a scaffold to assist in stretching students’ knowledge within the ZPD.

The aim of this qualitative study was to attain an increased understanding as to how several upper-secondary school students perceived and experienced teachers using humour during classroom discourse. The study was based on the following questions: What does humour mean to the students? What are the forms of humour utilized by teachers? How do students perceive the use of humour with regards to learning processes? Are there recommendations and cautionary measures for teachers to consider when incorporating humour in teaching? Methodology used was a semi-structured interview of 13 questions. Participants consisted of six students aged 16 to 19 years. The length of the interviews varied between 20-35 minutes. Results of the interviews indicated that openness and understanding the unique sense of humour existing in each classroom, as well as self-confidence and a moderate use of humour, are necessary to effectively incorporate humorous text and anecdotes in lessons to facilitate learning processes. However, the study revealed that openness is pivotal in the construction and maintenance of positive learning climates. Students did not experience humour during ESL lessons, indicating a possible lack of contextual knowledge in language teaching practices.

This essay argued the importance of literary theory in the classroom. As a teacher, it is possible to achieve the empathetic goals of the English curriculum and Judith A. Langer’s ambition of literate thinking by using poetry and literary theory in school. The essay demonstrated this with a Lacanian reading of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poems “To a Skylark” and “Ode to the West Wind.” The analysis focused on readable and unreadable aspects of the poems. The readable aspects centred on the role of the Imaginary in “To a Skylark” and the representation of the fragmented body in “Ode to the West Wind.” Furthermore, the unreadable elements of the poetry demonstrated the discrepancy between the performative and declarative dimensions and the role of the pathetic fallacy in the signifying chain. Finally, this essay argued that, although all aspects of psychoanalytic literary theory should not be used in the classroom, elements of Lacanian thought can be used to combat the prevalence of individualism in Swedish upper secondary schools.

This study has sought to investigate the expressions of content and purpose of the swedish upper secondary school based on three distinct categories. These being Qualification, Socialisation and Subjectification. The questions asked are What expressions do these three categories take as well as What consequences do these expressions have for civics teachers? Critical discourse analysis was leveraged to study the curriculum of 2011 and commentary thereof, as well as the syllabi for the Civics subject and the relevant commentary material thereof. The results show that a great deal of the studied material centers around qualification as an aspect, although the other two are still very much present. In addition to this the presentation of students as individuals in the larger society, as part of these expressions belonging to the categories, overall took on a particularly passive tone, where students were urged to be flexible and adaptable to outside influences rather than become sources of influence themselves. These findings resulted in several questions being raised to civics teachers about how to approach teaching their subject in regards to these particular trends, if they ought to encourage students to the passive mentality, for example.

This essay examines the 1962 filmization of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird through gender theory to identify its representation of gender, underlying gendered norms and how power is exercised through gender. The analysis concludes that the film’s portrayal of men and women follow a pattern of traditional gendered roles and norms in terms of their respective gender roles, accepted behavior, dress-code and men’s overarching influence in society in accordance with the film’s time and setting. Although the film’s main characters question and oppose certain gendered roles and norms, its problems are left unsolved and not reflected upon towards the end of the film. The film can be used in the Swedish EFL-classroom to identify and analyze gendered norms which can then act as the starting point of a discussion on how it stands in contrasts to the gendered norms and roles of modern-day United States and Sweden.

The purpose of this study is to examine how social science teachers regard the Swedish school's democracy assignments and opinions that conflict with those described in the school’s value system. The study aims to examine how teachers in social science view the school's democracy assignments and value system, how permissive social science teachers are during student discussions, and how social science teachers relate to pupils with xenophobic views. To achieve this goal, five semi-structured interviews have been conducted in which the respondents share their experiences of pupils who express xenophobic views and how they have chosen to act in these situations. The results shows that social science teachers believe that the democratic assignment in itself is clear. A problem with the democratic assignment however is that the value system needs to be interpreted, which brings a risk that different teachers choose to interpret the assignment in different ways. Furthermore, the results show that the respondents of the study have a varied experience of students who in some way expressed xenophobia. The respondents' actions in these situations can be linked to a number of the working methods or perspectives presented in the study's theory section. The conclusions that can be drawn from this study are thus that the respondents' experiences, actions and perceptions of the researched issues vary, yet all emphasize the importance of the social science topic in order to reinforce the future generations to become responsible and democratic citizens.

<p>Abstract</p><p>This thesis explores how secondary schoolteachers in Swedish, prioritise from the Swedish language history materials. The study includes interviews with two Swedish teachers and inquiries with students in two classes at the social science programme (third year). The student literature that is used has been analysed and the teaching is compared with the Swedish central teaching plan. The results show that the students are weak in placing language at different historical time periods and make conclusions of this. The results from both the inquiries and teaching contents disclose a general weakness as it comes to Swedish language history. The interviews points at the standardizing attitude towards the subject, from the teachers influence the size and the depth of teaching the students get in Swedish language history.</p>

<p>The purpose of this essay is to investigate different types of feedback and how they are used in schools, and to see which of them are preferred when it comes to error correction. Feedback is used in schools every day even though it is difficult to know if students really learn from it. Students tend to only glance briefly at the paper or test when it is returned and then throw it away. They are interested in how they scored but not really in how to improve their errors until next time. In this study, students wrote essays which were corrected with four different types of feedback and handed back to the students. The students got a chance to revise them and then the result was analyzed. The students were also given a questionnaire in order for me to find out what kind of feedback they liked the most and compare it to the result of the essay corrections. The different feedback types worked well with different students in general, although, underlining with description did not only work best, it was also chosen as the best type by most students. They seemed to think that this type was good for learning something from the feedback. Most students wanted to look for errors themselves instead of getting the correct answer from the teacher.</p>

The aim of this study is to explore how young people act and the organisation of school practice, and what possibilities they have of influencing the content and the forms practiced. The study focuses on how the pedagogic practice is organised in two classes in their first year of upper secondary school, one Social Science programme class and one Vehicle programme class. This embraces questions as: How, where, when and for what cause do students act to influence, and then with what result? Are students offered influence, and in that case which students? How does the organisation of and the content in the pedagogic practice prepare students to act in order to be able to exert influence in the future? These questions have been studied with focus on differences between the programmes with regard to social background and gender. The thesis has its theoretical base in Bernstein’s theory of pedagogy and code (1990, 2000), feminist perspectives (Arnot, 2006; Arnot &amp; Dillabough, 2000; Connell, 1987; Gordon, 2006; Gordon, Holland &amp; Lahelma, 2000) as well as theories of structuration (Giddens, 1984). The empirical material of the thesis was ethnographically produced during one school year, through classroom observations, individual interviews with students, teachers and head teachers, and the gathering of school and teaching material. The main results in the analysis are that actions taken to gain influence were rare, that the organisation of and the content in the pedagogic practice was mainly focused on students as becoming, i. e. it focused students possibilities to be able to influence in the future and not the present. Furthermore, changing of pedagogic content or pedagogic forms was dependent on students’ own actions.   There was a lack of teacher organisation to promote student influence. Finally, what was evaluated in the pedagogic practice, i.e. factual learning, did not promote student influence. The thesis demonstrates how pedagogic practice was gendered and classed, which had consequences for how students could influence and how students were prepared to influence in the future. Since the Social Science programme mostly attracts students from a middle-class background and the Vehicle programme those with a working-class background, the content in the programmes contributed to reproducing hierarchical social relations. The content for the Vehicle students proved to be simplified, personal and context dependent, whereas the content of the Social Science programme was more advanced, general and context independent, knowledge which, in argumentation for influence, is usually highly valued. In previous research, working class masculinities have often been associated with opposition towards study-oriented   subjects.   However, the current  study indicates that there is an interest in studying Swedish, English and maths. The students argued that it was necessary for future employment, and that the Vehicle industry is now asking for this kind of knowledge.