The aim with this paper is to examine how a short teaching project based on value creation pedagogy may develop primary school students` knowledge and motivation to learn about economics in the subject of social studies. Research shows internationally widespread economic illiteracy among many people both nationally and internationally. Students at school are perceived to have low knowledge of economics, and that it is difficult to learn abstract knowledge that will only become relevant in the future. Furthermore, as teachers during our practice, we find it difficult to motivate and engage students in wanting to learn about economics. For this reason, we wanted to investigate whether an alternative teaching method could increase students' motivation and deepen their learning in economics. Value creation pedagogy is a new educational philosophy grounded by Martin Lackéus in 2015. The philosophy is defined “letting students learn through creating value for others” (Lackéus 2016, s iii). To meet this definition, we created a short teaching project where students in fourth and fifth grade had the opportunity to write a letter to decision-makers in the students´ municipality to try to influence their outdoor environment. The purpose was that students would be able to use their knowledge of economics to formulate economic arguments in the letters to develop their knowledge and be more motivated to learn about economics. A total of 22 students in two classes participated in this study. Data were collected by audio-recordings of group discussions during the lessons and semi-structured interviews. The results showed that the students did not use economics to any great extent. They focused more on other things such as the environment. Therefore, we cannot see that the study's results suggest that the intervention has had the expected effects on students' learning in economics. However, most of the students still seemed to be motivated throughout the project.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-46377 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Christoffersson, Carin, Fredriksson, David |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Lärarutbildningen |
| 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 |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds