The aim of this thesis is to explore how different competing discourses in the historical context of the Swedish education development have qualified and disqualified different constructions of national curriculum. How and after what kind of principles is the curriculum constructed? What qualify who are going to be recognized as the author and addressee of the curriculum? These key ques-tions of the study are discussed in the first part of the thesis. My point of depar-ture is that the curriculum can be understood as a relation between freedom and control. In an educational system this relationship reflects the problematic ten-sion between the external demands from an authoritative center and the local need to independently reflect over educational issues. How these concepts are defined by the prevailing social discourses affect specific relations and construc-tions of curricula as a steering tool and a producer of specific teacher identities. In this sense, I claim that curriculum is constructed in different ways depending on which of the didactic questions are emphasized and answered and who is judged as the legitimate author. Based on this, three models of curriculum con-struction are formulated; the content based, the result based and the process based. These models are subsequently used as an analytical tool to examine the historical development of Swedish national curricula. The second part of the thesis investigates the Swedish education system and the production of the national curriculum as a product of rival discourses. The historical investigation begins 1842 when the first state curriculum was issued and the inquiry concludes in 2008. The findings indicate that no one single con-struction has been totally dominant and that there has been an on-going discur-sive struggle between different alternative and opinions about what teachers must do and be.

This study focuses on civics in Japanese upper secondary education. A new curriculum reform was implemented in 2022, and a new subject named Public [kokyo] became a subject on civics, which aims to nurture students to actively contribute to a peaceful and democratic society. The aims of this study are to examine textbook descriptions of democracy and the potential incorporation of deliberative communication, before and after curriculum reform. Ultimately, this comparative study over a curriculum reform seeks to identify the similarities and differences between the previous subject, Contemporary Society, and the new subject of Public. Employing qualitative content analysis, descriptions of democracy in the textbooks, moreover, the composition and the additional contents of the textbooks are analyzed, in order to examine the potential incorporations of deliberative communication. This study reveals that democracy is often conceptualized in textbooks as a limited idea of a government and political system, and the content includes less extended descriptions in relation to how the concept of democracy should be exercised in everyday life. That tendency can be seen in textbooks both in Public and Contemporary Society. On the other hand, in contrast to Contemporary Society textbooks whose composition is explanatory-oriented emphasizing understanding rather than practice in everyday life situations, Public textbooks incorporate more content that proposes deliberative communication. In Japan, which has been struggling with low social participation among the youth and knowledge-centered learning, it is significant to transform an understanding of the concept of democracy to root in daily life. Therefore, the promotion of deliberative communication in education has great potential to foster democratic values in individuals and society through daily mutual communication.

Abstract  The following essay will discuss conflict- ridden situations in the classroom and how the teachers’ leadership can strengthen the pupils’ democratic development to resolve these situations. Furthermore, we analyzed how deliberative dialogue could be of use to the teacher when these situations occur, as well as how, through civics education, the pupils could learn how to resolve conflicts in a controlled and peaceful environment. This study will, in particular, discuss several concepts concerning, among others, intersubjectivity, agonism and phronesis and how these takes place in the classroom. We will explore the teachers’ leadership ability and approach to the resolvement of conflicts through deliberative conversations. Our method when searching for relevant scientific articles was a systematic use of several databases and scientific journals, including ERIC, ERC, and Taylor & Francis online, where we found a vast variety of articles. Most of the articles show the difficulties the teacher might encounter when teaching, and we strove to examine if deliberative conversations are a useful method when facing sudden conflict-ridden situations in the classroom. We found a lack of knowledge in reference to deliberative conversations as a method in these situations, as well as, the teacher’s insecurity facing sudden conflict-ridden situations.

This thesis is about the role of special educators in (pre)school and about developing democratic communication. It is based on the theory of argumentation developed by Jürgen Habermas. The aim of the study was to describe the conditions that create possibilities for deliberative communication between special educators, parents, students and colleagues in (pre)school. My overarching aim was to contribute to a more distinct description of special educators´ field of knowledge. I have used a social constructionist approach. The project has been based in the field of action research. A precondition for deliberative dialogues in (pre)schools is to start out from a communicative perspective. That means that (1) some theoretical conditions have been made apparent, (2) knowledge about these conditions have been shown to be crucial for using an aware communicative perspective in a speech act, (3) an aware communicative perspective is revealed through procedures of knowledge. These procedures were understood by and made evident to me as a result of network meeting discussions. A communicative perspective, a special educator as facilitator and procedures of knowledge are found to be crucial for collaboration using a deliberative attitude in (pre)schools. Today there is often a lack of pedagogical professionals in (pre)schools who can act as a link between authorities, organisations, professionals and parents, and who have the authority to pose challenging pedagogical questions. This can be changed if the role of special educators is, instead of teacher, defined as communicative special educators working with dialogues on different levels.

Discussing controversial issues in the classroom is important. Through discussing controversial issues students can both learn and develop a more democratic ethos. The teachers in Sweden have a clear task to defend and mediate democratic values to the students. This leads to a conflict in the duty of the teacher because the curriculum also dictates that teachers have to let the students develop a sense of critical thinking and this opens up for potential criticism of the concept of democracy when students discuss controversial issues. Another conflict in the curriculum that appears when discussing controversial issues is the fact that teachers both have to respect the student’s opinions but also have a duty to challenge these opinions. That is why the aim of this essay is to analyse how social science teachers handle controversial issues in the classroom. The study was conducted by interviewing four social sciences teachers at high school level.   The result shows that teachers see controversial issues as issues that relate to human beings and that the discussion of these issues can arouse emotions and make the participants emotional. Further the result shows that teachers have a very open mind towards controversial issues and are open to discussing anti-democratic issues. In ensuring that the discussion of controversial issues leads to learning teachers mostly use strategies that ensure that student feel comfortable to express their opinions. In handling the above mentioned curricular conflicts that appear in the discussion of controversial issues three of four teachers saw that such a conflict existed. The other three gave answers that suggested that they did not think the conflict was so problematic and that their strategies for handling it where effective.

This thesis is about the role of special educators in (pre)school and about developing democratic communication. It is based on the theory of argumentation developed by Jürgen Habermas. The aim of the study was to describe the conditions that create possibilities for deliberative communication between special educators, parents, students and colleagues in (pre)school. My overarching aim was to contribute to a more distinct description of special educators´ field of knowledge. I have used a social constructionist approach. The project has been based in the field of action research.  A precondition for deliberative dialogues in (pre)schools is to start out from a communicative perspective. That means that (1) some theoretical conditions have been made apparent, (2) knowledge about these conditions have been shown to be crucial for using an aware communicative perspective in a speech act, (3) an aware communicative perspective is revealed through procedures of knowledge. These procedures were understood by and made evident to me as a result of network meeting discussions. A communicative perspective, a special educator as facilitator and procedures of knowledge are found to be crucial for collaboration using a deliberative attitude in (pre)schools. Today there is often a lack of pedagogical professionals in (pre)schools who can act as a link between authorities, organisations, professionals and parents, and who have the authority to pose challenging pedagogical questions. This can be changed if the role of special educators is, instead of teacher, defined as communicative special educators working with dialogues on different levels.

The aim of this thesis is to explore how different competing discourses inthe historical context of the Swedish education development have qualifiedand disqualified different constructions of national curriculum. How andafter what kind of principles is the curriculum constructed? What qualifywho are going to be recognized as the author and addressee of the curriculum?These key questions of the study are discussed in the first part of thethesis. My point of departure is that the curriculum can be understood as arelation between freedom and control. In an educational system this relationshipreflects the problematic tension between the external demandsfrom an authoritative center and the local need to independently reflectover educational issues. How these concepts are defined by the prevailingsocial discourses affect specific relations and constructions of curricula as asteering tool and a producer of specific teacher identities. In this sense, Iclaim that curriculum is constructed in different ways depending on whichof the didactic questions are emphasized and answered and who is judgedas the legitimate author. Based on this, three models of curriculum constructionare formulated; the content based, the result based and the processbased. These models are subsequently used as an analytical tool to examinethe historical development of Swedish national curricula.The second part of the thesis investigates the Swedish education systemand the production of the national curriculum as a product of rival discourses.The historical investigation begins 1842 when the first state curriculumwas issued and the inquiry concludes in 2008. The findings indicatethat no one single construction has been totally dominant and thatthere has been an on-going discursive struggle between different alternativeand opinions about what teachers must do and be.

Oro för klimatet är något som blir allt vanligare hos både barn och vuxna. Majoriteten av de studier som genomförts inom området klimatoro har undersökt äldre barn och vuxnas mående kopplat till klimatkrisen. Fokus för denna studie ligger därför på de yngre barnen, i årskurs två och tre, för att undersöka vad de känner inför klimatförändringarna. Tidigare forskning har visat att transformativa och deliberativa arbetsmetoder är fördelaktiga att använda vid undervisning om komplexa ämnesområden som klimatförändringar. Därför undersöker denna studie även om lärare använder dessa arbetssätt under sin geografiundervisning. Studien är genomförd med semistrukturerade intervjuer av två lärare och tre elevgrupper med fem elever vardera. Förutom intervjuer genomfördes även mer kreativa inslag som rankningsövningar och teckningsmoment. Resultatet visade att de intervjuade lärarna, till viss del, använde transformativa och deliberativa arbetsmetoder när de hade möjlighet att dela upp klassen i mindre grupper. De intervjuade lärarna ansåg att dagens elever var väl insatta i miljörelaterade frågor, jämfört med tidigare årskullar och gärna deltog i diskussioner inom ämnet. Samma lärare ansåg däremot inte att undervisningen bidragit till att förändra elevernas inställning till klimatet. Det framgår dessutom av resultatet att klimatförändringar är ett komplext ämnesområde som är svårt för ett flertal elever att samtala om. Det kan bero på elevernas unga ålder, då de på grund av detta ännu inte haft så omfattande undervisning inom området samt att eleverna ännu inte nåtts av stora mängder information om klimatförändringar. Resultatet för teckningsmomentet, som genomfördes med eleverna, visade att drygt hälften av eleverna kände oro för klimatförändringar vilket är en lägre andel än vad tidigare forskning visat. Det bedöms bero på att eleverna i denna studie är yngre än de barn och unga vuxna som deltagit i tidigare forskning. På grund av studiens begränsade storlek kan den dock inte anses vara representativ för alla lågstadielärare och unga elevers åsikter. / Concern about the climate is something that is becoming increasingly common among children. Most of the studies that have been done around this subject have investigated older childrens feelings about to the climate crisis. This studie will therefore focus on the younger children, in class two and three, to see how they feel about climate change. Previous research has shown that transformative and deliberative methods are beneficial to use when teaching about complex areas such as climate change. Therefore, our study examines whether the interviewed teachers use these working methods during their geography teaching. The study3 av 52is carried out with semi-structured interviews of two teachers and three student groups with five students each. In addition to the interview, we also used more creative elements such as ranking exercises and a drawing session. The results showed that the interviewed teachers used transformative and deliberative learning when they had the opportunity to divide the class into smaller groups. The teachers also considered that today's students were well versed in environment-related issues compared to previous students and that they are happy to participate in discussions on the subject. Based on the results the teachers did not consider that the teaching contributed to changing the students attitude towards the climate. It also appears from the results that climate change is a complex subject and that it was difficult for several students to answer the questions during the interview. This may be due to the young age of the students, as they have not yet been taught a lot in the field and have not yet been reached by any large amounts of information about climate change. The results for the drawing session, which was carried out with the students, showed that just over half of the students felt concerned about the climate change, which is a lower percentage than previous research has shown. It is judged to be due to the fact that the students in this study are younger than the children and young adults who participated in previous research. However, due to the limited size of the study, the results cannot be considered representative of the views of all primary school teachers and young students. / <p>2024-01-12</p>

The aim of this thesis was to examine the conditions for democratic bildung-oriented education for students in the school science discourse. This is something that the Swedish curriculum is based on and thereby the education should develop students' capacity for social, political and cultural awareness. The theoretical framework used is grounded in critical didactics and feminist theories which assume that students should feel involved and get their voices heard. The Swedish national test in chemistry (2009-2012) and student answers (198n) from one of the items in the 2009 test have been analyzed using discourse analysis. The first study explored the norms and values present in the national tests in chemistry, in relation to people, society and nature. The second study focused on student’s evaluative language in their free-text answers to one of the items. Thereby attitudes in student answers were projected in relation to the norms and values found in the first study. Finally, the student answers were used once more in a third study, where students’ positioning in relation to the scientific discourse in the chemistry test (2009) was explored, as well as which feminist figurations these subject positions express. The results show that the national tests harbor an elitist image and anandrocentric bias.The normative message is that students should adopt an objective, rational, non-judgmental and non-emotional role. Topics connected to young people’s everyday life, that might interest students, are rare. Contrary to the normative messages mediated by the tests, students use evaluative and embodied language to a high extent in their answers. They choose to write about topics that are close to their everyday life and they show that they are emotionally engaged. Through feminist figurations theories used in the third study one can see how the student-subject positions offer resistance in different ways. This is shown in their criticism of science and technology, human society and nature. The students' responses have embraced an embodied chemistry that can be interpreted as teaching based on bildung and deliberative discussions.

The aim of this dissertation is to study learning through deliberative dialogue, the social climate of the classroom, and certain aspects of student participation in civic education in upper secondary schools, as well as aspects of deliberative didactics. It takes its theoretical point of departure in John Dewey’s texts on democracy and education. An additional perspective on the social and moral aspects of democratic life is provided by Axel Honneth’s studies on disrespect and a morality of recognition. An empirical study is presented in which students and teachers were interviewed in focus groups about their opinions and experiences, on the basis of the aim of the dissertation and the research questions addressed. The analysis reveals a potential to learn civics thorough dialogue and discussion. A dialogue with deliberative qualities is characterized as one with a clearly defined purpose and relevant knowledge content. In the course of such a dialogue, the participants apply and develop certain abilities, some of which are identified in the study. Regarding the social climate in the classroom, especially during learning through dialogue and discussion, several difficulties and problematic situations were mentioned in the focus group interviews. These were problems related to “disturbing silence” and “troubling speech”. Honneth’s theory of moral recognition is in such situations seen as a basis for teachers’ professional reflections and for deliberative dialogues involving teacher and students. Concerning student participation and the civic education classroom as a form of democratic community and a public sphere, both students and teachers interviewed spoke of a balancing act between many different interests, some of which are discussed with a focus on the formation of interests. Other aspects studied are how a sense of community can be created and how the private and individualistic meet the public and common in civic education. It is concluded that the civic education classroom, considered as a public sphere, can be an arena for deliberation and thus develop a sense of community and a deliberative competence for use in a wider citizenship perspective. In the final chapter it is concluded that deliberative didactics can be seen as a didactic dimension of reflexive cooperation. It is characterized as a reflexive approach whereby the teacher invites the students to deliberate on issues of subject content, ways of working, the social climate of the classroom, and different aspects of participation and common interests. It is also argued that the practical cooperation – the actions and their consequences – following from intersubjective speech are as important as the dialogue itself.