Democracy is an ever so current topic, especially since we are facing a negative trend of decreasing voting participation in Sweden. This is, according to some, evidence of a democratic failure, while others are of the opinion that democracy is ever changing and that voting participation is not the only way of assessing the strength of a democracy. The younger generation is often at the center of the discussion of democracy, and are often seen as uninterested or even unconvinced of the point of democracy. In this study I seek to understand how pupils in upper secondary school understand and construct democracy and citizenship, hoping that this will further my understanding of the purpose of the Swedish social science subject. To do this I have interviewed 16 students in three focus groups, focusing on how they as a group discuss and construct democracy and citizenship. The interviews have been analyzed by three different theoretical points of views. Firstly I have used Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne’s (2004) work along with Erik Amnå’s (2008) study about democracy and different types of citizenship. I then focused on social interaction and how language can be used to transfer power and responsibility, mainly using James A. Holstein and Gale Miller’s (2013) study. Lastly this is put in the context of social science, using Gert Biesta (2020) to understand the split mission of education and social science specifically. Pupils understand democracy and citizenship in different ways, but have a mutual understanding of what the ”right answer” to the question of what democracy is. This is something they probably have been socialized into knowing from their years in school. As the title of this study insinuates, pupils are inclined to transfer the power of change to politicians or adults when discussing the topic more freely, which also transfers the responsibility of society from themselves and makes them passive. This is something the students seem to think is fair, due to their lack of knowledge in politics. This in turn makes it clear that the pupils' expressed needs concerning social science education is focused on deeper factual knowledge, which might be a part of what social science should be but makes the task of allowing students to be active citizens invisible.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-68383 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Strand, Tyra |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för samhälle, kultur och identitet (SKI) |
| 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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