The aim of this study is tos to make visible if and how teachers integrate democratic abilities in social studies education. I also want to examine what teachers experience enable or hinder the teaching of democratic abilities. The study is based on the following questions: Does deliberative and participatory democratic abilities apply in teaching and if so, how is this done in the actual teaching? What opportunities and challenges do teachers find in conversations-and participatory democratic abilities? The study examines how teachers teach deliberative and participatory democracy. This study is qualitative and based on interviews and observations offour teachers working in grade 3. The theoretical frame of the study is founded on the deliberative democracy model of Tomas Englund and Åsa Forsberg which is used to study how deliberative abilities take place in teaching. Furthermore, the theory formed by Roger Hart, called Ladder of participation,is used to study whether teachers invite studentsto participateand influencetheir own education. I also used Ljungberg and Unemar Öst theory about teacher's communicative strategies in connection with the controversy handling to give an understanding about how teachers handle controversy, but also how they in connection with controversy encourages deliberative conversations.The results of the study showed that the students did apply and practice conversations democratic abilities.Despite this, some deliberative democratic abilities were more prominent than others.On the other handthe application of participatory abilities were not as common as training deliberativ democractic abilites.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the concept of democracy and education for democracy are formulated in school policy documents related to the four teacher’s description of their work with democracy in the civic subject. The study is based on the following questions:  What type of democracy is presented in the school curriculum as well as other school policy documents? How do the participant teachers understand democracy? How do the participant teachers describe and motivate their work with democracy? This study is made through a qualitative method based on a contextual analysis and interviews with four teachers working in grade 1-3. The study is based on two theoretical extensions and these are electoral-, participate-, deliberate democracy and the traditional- , liberal progressive-, social critical orientated views. Common to the four school policy documents that have been analysed, the most prominent conceptions of and approaches to democracy is participatory and deliberative democratic perspectives. The results show that the school documents and the teacher’s description of democracy rarely mention electoral democracy. However, it can be seen in the school policy documents that there is a notion that knowledge about democracy.  That is, knowledge of political ideologies and the selection process, is required to enable participatory and deliberative democracy.  Teachers understanding of democracy show mainly participatory democracy perspective. However, it has come to shown from the interviews that the teacher’s description of their work with democracy in the civic subject mainly shows deliberative perspectives. One conclusion of this study is that the documents and the teachers' descriptions of democracy and education for democracy are quite similar.