In 1993, the Swedish National Agency for Education, Skolverket, coined and implemented the so-called collective morals mission, or “värdegrundsuppdraget,” which subsequently led up to the publication of a new national syllabus for upper-secondary school, LPF94. The collective morals mission constituted the values to be taught in Swedish schools and also positioned the Swedish school system ideologically. However, following its publication, teachers found it difficult to understand how they are to carry out and understand said mission, difficulties that seem to still be present today. Therefore, this project presents a qualitative study on how English teachers reflect upon, and relate their teaching to, the collective morals mission, how they do it, along with the possibilities the English subject has in conveying these aspects of fostering, through explicit education on the subject. Based on prior, personal observations the initial hypothesis was that the English subject is often forgotten, in relation to other subjects, in terms of providing students with education related to the collective morals. However, this is not due to English teachers not acknowledging opportunities for the subject to convey content, but because of the strong selective traditions of the subject, focusing education on form and not content, as it is a foreign language. To evaluate this hypothesis, semi-structured interviews with four English teachers were conducted and three separate curriculum analysis were carried out. This enabled an understanding of how the collective morals evolved over time and became what they are today. The results partly confirmed the initial hypothesis. Teachers do implement many features of the collective morals; however, they do not explicitly characterize them as such. The curricula analyses show a progression of the collective morals to be implemented in the explicit grading criterion for passing grade. These results are discussed, and conclusions regarding what that means for English teachers are presented.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:oru-76666 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Lidén, Elias |
| Publisher | Örebro universitet, Institutionen för humaniora, utbildnings- och samhällsvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| 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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