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.

This study explores the motivation that students in Swedish upper secondary school have for engaging with, and learning, English both in and out of school to find out if there is a gap between them and find a way to possibly bridge this gap if it exists. Students’ motivation has been described as important for their learning and motivation and its effects have been studied in several ways. A study with focus on how informal learning and out of school (extramural) English improve students’ English proficiency have been conducted by Sundqvist (2010) and Socket (2013). The effect of schools, and teachers in particular, on students’ motivation in school or during class has been studied by Sundqvist (2015), Bernaus and Gardner (2008) and Ushida (2005), while a study on what actually motivates students was done by Saeed and Zyngier (2012). This study is conducted through group interviews with four focus groups made up of three students each which come from two different upper secondary schools in Sweden. The results of these interviews are analysed through Ryan and Deci’s Self-Determination Theory (2000) to determine how motivated the students are and how their motivation is affected by different factors. The results show that students are highly motivated to engage with English activities on their own volition, and that they are highly motivated to learn English. The results also show that teachers have a great effect on students’ motivation and can both raise and lower it depending on how they conduct their lessons. Students want more choice, to learn through authentic English experiences and a teacher that they can relate to.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how the period of antiquity is portrayed in the Swedish upper secondary school material in the course History 1bfrom a gender perspective, by examining digitalized study materials that claims to follow the specifiedcurriculum. The course curriculum for History 1bstates the importance of including female groups in the historic narrative, as well as that ideas of equality between sexes should permeate everything connected to teaching, among other things. The paper aims to analyse how gender is portrayed by examining the digitalized study material of DigilärHistoria 1 100 poäng, Nationalencyklopedin, NE, Historia 1 and Gleerups Möt historien 1b. The analysis was done using theories of gender from Yvonne Hirdman and Joann Scott to put historical power structures in relation to gender. The questions considered were (1)Which male and female characters are included and (2)how are they portrayed? (3)Lastly, how are social differences between them explained?The results showan overrepresentation of men. In the Gleerups material no specific female character was represented. NE’s material had 26 % and Digilär’s 20 % representation of women. The female characters are portrayed with stereotypical female characteristics such as their body, seduction and their ability to bear children. Female leaders are shown only to influence issues regarding equality and other women, whereas all mentioned men are portrayed as changing society especially as conquerors and warriors. Masculinity and femininity are portrayed as counterparts and men’s greatest weakness is any inability to control their wives and daughters. There are some exceptions that blurs the line such as Athene, Apollon and to some extent Cleopatra which are portrayed by showing characteristics associated with the other gender. The writers of the study materials are limited by the limited number of available historical sources and the picture they betray but only NE points out the problems with this. Neither Digilär nor Gleerups mention the skewed picture as a problem but Digilär shows to some extent how people in Greece legitimized the patriarchal structures.

The essay has been written in order to give a picture of culture teaching within the subject of English in upper secondary schools in Sweden. Although earlier research within this field is still not very extensive, a theoretical framework has been based on the results available and the syllabuses for the subject of English in the upper secondary school. A questionnaire with open question has been used as a tool for collecting data. The main focus is put on analyzing the contents of and ways in which teachers deal with cultural studies, considering the goals in the syllabuses. The results support the results of previous scientific investigations concerning culture studies in Swedish schools and show that culture teaching is often dealt with in the traditional ways where culture is viewed mainly as customs, traditions and history of the target language country, and where teachers mainly choose cultural elements from the UK and the US and seldom from other English speaking countries. Various factors that influence teachers choices in their cultural studies are examined and alternative changes considering the teaching methods, for example ethnographic training, are proposed. The uncertainty about how to approach and what to include in cultural studies is reflected in the testing of students on cultural issues. The survey shows that half the respondents do not test their pupils on culture at all. The conclusion, based on the results of this survey and the previous research, is that no great changes have taken place within this field over the last decade and that further continuous study of culture teaching is recommended.

Abstract 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.

The communicative approach to language learning is widely taught in Western education, and yet its predecessor, the grammar-translation method, is still commonly employed in other parts of the world. In Sweden, the increasing popularity of the communicative approach is often justified by the high level of students’ communicative skills (Öhman, 2013). At the same time, students’ written texts and speech contain many grammatical errors (Öhman, 2013). Consequently, being aware of their tendency to produce grammatical errors, some students express beliefs regarding both the explicit and implicit learning of grammar (Sawir, 2005; Boroujeni, 2012). The objective of this thesis is to gain more knowledge regarding students’ beliefs concerning the learning of English grammar at the upper secondary level, in Sweden. With this purpose a survey was conducted in two schools in Sweden, where 49 upper-secondary English students participated. Qualitative and quantitative methods were applied to process the collected data. Despite some difference in the participants’ ages, there were many similarities in their attitudes towards the teaching and learning of grammar. The results show that the participants in both schools believe that only by applying both, explicit and implicit methods, can they obtain a high level of language proficiency. The results of this study can help teachers in planning different activities that enhance the students’ knowledge of grammar.

The aim of this study is to investigate oral peer review on argumentative speech and to study the attitudes towards this peer review. The investigation was performed in an up-per secondary school class, and it focused on the different types of oral responses students give each other. In addition, the study investigated in what way the students experience this type of peer review. The results show that students reflect on form and performance as well as content, but they place more emphasis on form and performance than content. Students are positive about peer review and its importance for their progress. The investigation shows that peer review is needed, but the methods need to be developed further as response should mirror all parts of a work process, peer review can be used in other situations such as work life as well as in the teaching of other subjects.

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.

The focus of this study lies within gender coded musical instruments. This concept concerns the unconscious thought of musical instruments as either feminine or masculine. The aim of this study is to acknowledge the existence of this concept amongst pupils in Swedish upper secondary schools, and to demonstrate how it can affect pupils’ choice of main instrument. The study presents earlier studies that show signs of the existence of gender coded instruments. It also explores the concept of sex and gender in different situations. These include the use of gender in the Swedish language, in music, and in an ensemble situation. Fifteen pupils from two different schools were interviewed, and the conclusion is that the gender coding exists. When the pupils were asked to categorise different instruments as feminine or masculine, the results revealed that singing and piano were considered feminine. Some of the masculine instruments were electric guitar, electric bass, and drums. According to the pupils, the reasons behind their main choice of musical instrument can be put into five different categories. These are; Role models, Parents’ influense, the accessibility of musical instruments, Norms and Biological stereotypes. Three of these categories; Role models, Norms and Biological stereotypes are also what they believe are reasons behind gender coded musical instruments. The aim of this study is to raise awareness of this situation as the Swedish school values show that schools and their teachers are supposed to work towards equality between the genders, a task which cannot be done if this continues.

This is a qualitative study about how literature is used in the subject of English as a foreign language (EFL) or English as a second language (ESL) in the upper secondary school classroom. The study specifically focuses on what goals and activities are ascribed to the use of literature in the English language classroom. Literature has been used in the Swedish language classroom for decades but there is still an uncertainty as to how literature can and could be used. The aim for this thesis was to achieve an understanding of teacher’s choices when it came to goals and activities linked to the EFL/ESL classroom. This is a literature review where primary sources have been analyzed using critical literacy and cultural theory to specify the different authors stand-point about the use of literature. Background information also provides a basis for the analysis where authors dedicated to the use of literature in the language classroom discuss and describe general concepts and ideas of how literature is used and could or should be used. The study showed that depending on the teacher’s goals with literature different methods and activities are linked to the lessons. Critical literacy and cultural theoryhelped develop an understanding of the thoughts and ideas underpinning the concepts of the primary sources, whether it was about altering students’ behavior or fostering democratic and empathetic citizens. The results showed that literature is used in a variety of ways, but at times the student-oriented goals and activities are unclear. This calls for further research on the area of using literature in the EFL/ESL classroom.