The purpose of this study is to determine the role of the history subject in achieving the overall mission of the swedish upper secondary school. This line of inquiry required a mapping of the swedish upper secondary schools mission, followed by determining what goals and missions were expressed in the history subject itself. This was achieved by studying the curriculum of 2011, as well as the documents detailing the purpose and contents of the history subject, including commentary material for said subject. The study utilizes discourse analysis and four structuring themes, democratic-ideological education, democratic-political education, working life preperation and personal development, to study the missions expressed in the curriculum. The results show that while the portions of the curriculum that detail the overall missions and goals of the upper secondary school thoroughly represent all four themes, as well as three additional ones, environmental awareness, historical and geographical contextuality and identity and cultural education, the history subject only covers a total of five themes, excluding the working life preperation and environmental awareness themes. These findings show that while the history subject to a large extent is engaged and immersed in the overall goals of the upper secondary school, it does not carry with it all of them.

Syftet med den här studien är att undersöka vad svensklärare på gymnasiet har för uppfattning till läsförståelseundervisning, samt hur de arbetar och vad de använder för metoder och strategier för att främja läsmotivation och läsförståelse. Undersökningen genomfördes via kvalitativ metod, där sex svensklärare intervjuades. Resultatet visar att samtliga svensklärare upplever att det är viktigt att arbeta främjande med läsförståelse på gymnasiet. Somliga anser att man bör fokusera på att bibehålla läsmotivation i läsförståelseundervisningen. Det förekommer olika metoder för hur lärarna arbetar med läsförståelse i undervisningen, men samtliga arbetar mycket med textläsning i undervisningen. Flertalet av lärarna anser också att det är viktigt att gå igenom lässtrategier med eleverna innan läsning, för att eleverna ska kunna förstå det lästa. Även efterföljande diskussioner och samtal om böcker och texterna var något som delgavs vid intervjuerna. / The purpose of this study is to investigate Swedish teachers understanding of comprehension education and use of methods and strategies to promote reading motivation and reading comprehension in upper secondary school.  The survey was conducted through qualitative methodology, in which six Swedish teachers were interviewed. The results show mainly that all teachers feel that it is important to work for promoting reading comprehension at upper secondary school. Some argue for focusing on maintaining reading motivation in reading comprehension education. There are different methods regarding reading comprehension in teaching. The informers work a lot with text reading in the classroom. The majority of teachers also consider it important to review reading strategies with the students before reading, so that students better can understand the reading. Even subsequent discussions and conversations about books and texts were something that was announced at the interviews.

This paper researches the theoretical background needed for the implementation of literary texts with multicultural themes for use in EFL courses in Sweden and it offers several concrete didactical solutions for multicultural reading. The theory of multicultural education by J. A. Banks is presented with focus on the dimension of knowledge construction. The processes that are examined are the learning processes in the zone of proximal development by Vygotsky (1986), the concept of scaffolding by Woods, Bruner & Ross (1976) and the process of perspective-taking by Thein & Sloan (2013). These processes each employ a three-step sequence that moves students from their existing knowledge to new knowledge and revised personal opinions. The teacher’s role is to provide support during the learning process. The second part of the paper suggests different activities for the multicultural reading of a novel, used to make the process of multicultural knowledge construction and scaffolding visible. Teacher support includes text reduction, book discussion and language analysis. Discussion points found in Love Medicine start with revising the stereotypical images, discovering how personal experience influences knowledge or how ethnicity influences professional career choices. When teachers and students read literary texts with multicultural themes, students’ racial prejudice can be reduced (Banks 2004) and their ethical attitudes become more open (Thein & Sloan 2013). The literary work chosen for framing in the theory is Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. The paper ends with a reflection over the limitations of multicultural reading projects.

Den här licentiatuppsatsen behandlar berättade erfarenheter av att vara elev på Språkintroduktion. Programmet är ett av fem introduktionsprogram i den svenska gymnasieskolan och tar emot nyanlända ungdomar i åldrarna 16 till 19 år. Utbildningen på Språkintroduktion har en tyngdpunkt på svenska språket samt andra ämnen som eleverna har behov av att studera. Sålunda ska undervisningen organiseras utifrån varje elevs förutsättningar och behov. Studien bygger på intervjuer med språkintroduktionselever. Analysen fokuserar följaktligen 22 elevers berättade erfarenheter av att vara elever på Språkintroduktion. Elevernas berättelser blir ett sätt att förstå hur deras erfarenheter av programmet flätas samman med tidigare skol- och arbetslivserfarenheter liksom med tankar om framtiden. I resultaten presenteras tre teman som framträder i berättelserna.  Det första temat gäller samtliga elever och behandlar erfarenheten av att inte kunna svenska. Det andra temat innefattar vissa elever och synliggör två elevidentiteter som särskilt framträder. Den första av dem handlar om att gå från att vara en högpresterande elev till att vara nybörjare och den andra om att gå från att vara en elev med kort eller ingen skolbakgrund till att äntligen vara elev. Slutligen handlar det tredje temat om hur Språkintroduktion tar form som ett mellanrum.

The main objective in this study is to examine the pupil’s possibility to affect the upper secondary schools in Stockholm, Sweden. I was once active in the pupil’s council and experienced some hardships, feeling a great dissatisfaction among teachers and principals against pupil’s suggestions and chances to affect their school environment. Thus I wanted to do a contemporary study of where schools in Stockholm stand today within this issue. This study is based on Robert A. Dahl’s theory about democracy, from which I have created my theoretical template, I interpreted Dahl’s theory and formed my own seven institutions from his original theory. With this construction I developed survey questions, which were designed to measure school democracy. I used a qualitative survey method, where I interviewed pupils who are active in the pupil’s council in five different schools today, one of the respondents is a civil servant for the Swedish pupils council centralorganization (Seco). Based on my interviews I have analyzed whether the contemporary upper secondary schools is or is not democratic. My conclusion, I see a wide variety of democratic institutions in Stockholm today, but when comparing the schools today with schools just six years ago, I can trace down huge differences. The pupil’s have learned to organize in a wider manner than six years ago, moreover the main problem doesn’t seem to be a lack of opportunities to influence the school today, the general attitude against the pupil’s council seem to have changed considerably amongst principals and teachers for the better. The main problem for the schools to actually be democratic in a wide manner seems to lie on the pupil’s, if pupil’s showed more interest the schools would be more democratic. Because schools today strive to be as democratic as possible and with organizations like Seco the pupil’s council will be democratic as well, the schools in the Swedish (Stockholm) contemporary society today is according to my study democratic.

Undersökningens syfte är att undersöka hur lärare i intervjuer om språkhistoria rekontextualiserar styrdokumentens intentioner i gymnasieskolans kurs Svenska 3 i sin undervisning. Intresseområdena i lärarnas språkhistorieundervisning gäller vilket innehåll som tas upp, hur undervisningens struktureras, och vilka motiv som anges för att elever behöver kunskaper i språkhistoria. Studien visar att det finns samstämmighet mellan lärarnas innehåll och motiv, medan undervisningsstrukturen varierar. Detta gör att det både kan sägas att lärarnas flexibilitet och tolkningsutrymme i skolan framträder, men också att det verkar finnas en relativt gemensam överenskommelse om vilket innehåll som ska delges eleverna och varför detta ska göras. Vidare framkommer en stark koherens mellan varje lärares innehåll, metod och motiv, vilket gör att momentet språkhistoria framstår som välmotiverat, och därmed även rättfärdigar sin plats i svenskundervisningen. Att rekontextualisera styrdokumentens formuleringar i undervisningen framstår som relativt oproblematiskt för lärarna i studien. / The aim of the study is to examine how teachers recontextualize the intentions of the steering documents in their teaching of the Swedish 3 course in upper secondary school in interviews about the history of language. The areas of interest in the teachers’ instruction in the history of language concern the content they take up, how the teaching is structured, and the reasons they state for pupils needing a knowledge of the history of Swedish. The study shows that there is concordance between the teachers’ content and motives, whereas the structure of their teaching varies. As a result, it can be said that the teachers’ flexibility and scope for interpretation in school stands out, but there also appears to be fairly good agreement about the content that should be taught to the pupils and why they should be taught this. There was also good coherence between each teacher’s content, method and motive, which means that the module of history of language seems well motivated, thus justifying its place in the teaching of Swedish. Recontextualizing the wording of the steering documents in teaching seems relatively unproblematic for the teachers in the study.

The aim of this empirical study is to investigate the role of the L1 (Swedish for the purpose of this study) at upper secondary schools in Sweden, in English class. It also examines teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards the use of the L1 in the ESL classroom. The method that has been used for this thesis is a qualitative research method. In order to collect data, structured open-ended interviews were conducted. A total of eleven upper secondary students from the same school, and six upper secondary ESL teachers from four different schools, participated in this study. The results show that almost all of the participating students and teachers think that the L1 should be allowed in the classroom, as it can be used as a resource for learning. For instance, as the results demonstrate, the L1 was mainly used as a tool to clarify instructions, explain difficult terms, explain vocabulary and grammar rules, when translating, to manage discipline, and when they are socializing with each other. The majority of the participants suggest that the L1 worked as a very helpful tool in the learning process, especially in situations where students lacked understanding. However, there were also critical responses towards the use of the L1, particularly since the L1 can be easily overused. Previous research shares these latter views regarding the use of the L1 in the classroom, and confirms that it is important that learners are exposed to as much English as possible for successful language learning and development.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att se hur två diskurser, marknadsdiskurs och skoldiskurs, konstrueras i gymnasieskolors informationstexter. Dels genom värderingar, dels genom hur eleverna framställs. Texterna är tagna från skolornas hemsidor. Jag undersöker totalt fem skoltexter samt en text från Skolverket som belyser skolan som institutions värderingar. Undersökningen utgår från Norman Faircloughs kritiska diskursanalys samt textanalys, bland annat den systemisk-funktionella grammatiken (SFG). Uppsatsen är språkvetenskaplig och utgår från det textuella. Jag utgår i min analys främst från värdeord, eller buzz words, där jag belyser positivt värderade ord i texterna. Jag utgår även från en analys av fraser samt den interpersonella analysens språkhandlingar och modalitet. Analysresultatet visar att skolornas texter präglas av en marknadsdiskurs där värdeord som ”entreprenör” och ”företag” ofta förekommer. Ett tydligt resultat är hur ord som realiserar en marknadsdiskurs betydligt oftare värderas som positiva i sig själva än ord som realiserar en skoldiskurs. Det är även tydligt att de värderingar som framkommer i skolornas texter inte återfinns i Skolverkets text. De elever som framträder i skolornas texter är oftast ambitiösa, drivna och självgående. Även om det finns vissa undantag. Uppsatsens resultat kan på ett större plan kopplas till en allmän samhällsförändring där ett marknadsspråk tar större plats inom den offentliga sektorn. För gymnasieskolorna innebär det att det målas upp en bild av en skola som finns till för elever som är högpresterande och intresserade av entreprenörskap och företagande.

Pragmatic competence has become an essential component of L2 (second language) proficiency. The purpose of this case study is to investigate how pragmatic competence in English is taught in a public Swedish secondary and upper secondary school. The aim with this study is to reach an in-depth understanding of how the teachers in this specific school view, value and teach pragmatic competence. The study has a qualitative approach and was conducted through semi-structured interviews with two teachers. In addition to the interviews, an analysis of the pedagogic material used in the classroom was made. The most significant findings of the study show that pragmatic competence and cultural knowledge are teachable and are indeed being taught in the studied school. Different types of oral activities are the mostly used pedagogical practices to teach different aspects of pragmatic competence. The aspects of pragmatic competence that are in focus, in both secondary and upper secondary school, are formal and informal language, adaptation of the language and politeness.

The reasons for incorporating literature in foreign language classrooms range from increased language proficiency and gaining cultural experience to increasing literary knowledge. In Swedish upper-secondary school, literature inclusion is advocated by the course curriculum, but with few specifics as to how teachers should approach it. This study investigates how teachers approach literature teaching, what their ideals for their teaching are, and what difficulties they experience when teaching. These questions were addressed in semi-structured interviews with seven upper-secondary school teachers. The data was analyzed using Content Analysis. The results show that the teachers viewed the role of literature as a way to enhance students’ social and cultural awareness, as well as their language proficiency. The teachers emphasized maintaining and cultivating students’ interests by choosing literature that contain themes relatable and interesting to students, as well as by enthusing students when introducing the texts. When working with the texts the most common assignments and exercises were based on literary analysis and subjective student reflection. The biggest constraint perceived by the teachers were unmotivated and uninterested students. A possible conclusion to be drawn from the research is that it is increasingly important for teachers to connect to students’ needs and interests when incorporating literature. A suggestion for further research is therefore to investigate students’ perceptions and experiences with literature in English class. In addition, the efficiency of literature teaching approaches needs to be researched, as this area is fairly unexplored.