The aim of the study is to investigate social studies teachers’ idea of the importance of students’ agency for their future citizenship and how social studies teachers in upper secondary school assist students’ agency in their teaching. The methodologically the study is based on, is 6 interviews with social studies teachers of different ages and with different experience. The results show that the social studies teachers’ teaching have two main themes. The themes are to contribute to the students’ analysis of the world around them and assist the students’ future life as employees. Two theoretical starting points have been used to discuss the results, Ninni Wahlström’ capacity strategy and John Dewey’s communication theory. Social studies teacher’s teaching with a focus on students’agency means that the students should develop the future skills to set goals, reflect on their learning, to be able to make independent decisions, which leads to become competitive in the labor market with general competencies such as creativity, language skills and social competence. This results in that the students become competitive in the labor market where they have the capacity to become independent individuals with general skills such as creativity, language skills and social skills. The social studies teachers view that it is crucial for the students ’agency that they develop an analysis of the world around them, which means that the students can analyze current events such as the Ukraine war in 2022 and be able to discuss this with other people. The students can use this in their future citizenship. Social studies teachers encourage students’ agency in social studies by using project work in social studies for students to learn to solve problems in creative ways to solve real problems as future citizens. The social studies teachers encouragea linguistic ability through their social teaching that encourage students' agency. It means being able to reason, see connections and draw conclusions about current events. The social studies teachers believe that this encourages the students’ personal development and their future citizenship where the students have a self-esteem to succeed in projects in the future and to understand modern society. According to the social studies teachers, the students should socialize with other students through group exercises in teaching, which they believe gives the students expanded opportunities in life. The social studies teachers believe that dialog as a pedagogical method encourage the student’s democratic competence, which means that the students develop a thought structure about the democratic rules within a democratic society and it is also important for the students’ agency that they develop a democratic competence which means that the students are critical of the information in a global community so they know which information can be trusted. The pedagogical approach among the social studies teachers is that it should be a creative social environment where the students learn to think independently with the teacher as a supervisor in the classroom who does not impose knowledge on the students. The main pedagogical method to assist students’ future citizenship in social education is to use news in the social studies. Keywords: Social studies, Citizenship, Media, Language skills, Agency, Social competence, Creativity, Upper Secondary school
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:ltu-105516 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Haking Junggren, Jack Mikael |
| Publisher | Luleå tekniska universitet, Institutionen för ekonomi, teknik, konst och samhälle |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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