The purpose of the study is to investigate teachers’ perceptions of school’s democracy mission, focussing on the subject of social science, with the aim of providing perspectives on the democratic work in school. There is previous research indicating that school’s democracy mission should be integrated in various ways in social science education to provide both knowledge and behavioural training. However, there is a lack of research illustrating how teachers design and plan the presentation of democracy in grades 1-3. The study has been conducted using a phenomenographic approach to empirically study teachers’ perceptions of school’s democracy mission in relation to the curriculum and teaching. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six active teachers at different schools. To substantiate the teachers’ statements, pragmatism and Dewey’s learning theory were applied in the analysis. The main results show that there is some variation in teachers’ perceptions of the meaning of the democracy mission and in how they interpret the governing documents. Likewise, there is variation in the way teachers shape the mission of democracy in their teaching to ensure that students gain knowledge of how society is structured and of how to act in a democratic society. An interesting aspect that has emerged is that the governing documents are perceived as unclear and diffuse. One conclusion to be drawn from this is that it places great demands on the teachers’ professional skills in interpreting the assignment and shaping it in their teaching.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-78698 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Bergman, Sarah |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Institutionen för samhälls- och kulturvetenskap (from 2013) |
| 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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