This paper deals with breaks in upper secondary school. The aim with the study was to study the function of breaks for upper secondary students by investigating students’ activities during breaks with the main issues: “what does the students do during breaks?”, “how do they experience breaks?” and “What is the relation between breaks and lessons?”. A combination of the two complementary methods observation and interview was chosen to study this. The study was executed on an upper secondary school during one month. I have visited the school several times every week and written daily notes over my observations. Eight students have been interviewed, four from the Science programme and four from the Trade- and Administration programme. The results were analysed in relation to previous research and theoretical concepts chosen because they occur in the same research. The results of the study shows that the most common break activities were to wait and fetch things, rest, study and socialize. The students who were interviewed thought that breaks and free periods often were too long and they experienced them as meaningless, while the short breaks in between lessons only offered enough time to prepare for the lesson to come. This seemed to be accepted by the students because no one expressed that it was a problem to only have a short amount of time between lessons. This result can be compared to other studies where the students experienced this as stressful. The students’ attitude towards the short breaks can be a part of the local peer culture on the school. It would be interesting to see what students at other schools think of this. It was highlighted in the discussion that the academic work sets the frame work the school day. The students considered breaks to be an important part of the school day since it was then that they had time to socialize with peers. The importance of the school class for socialization was also highlighted. I have come across many things in this study which I could not investigate in this paper due to the size of the study. I have also had a hard time finding previous research that deals with the topic of this paper. This signals that more research is needed regarding breaks among older children and the interaction of older children.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-167293 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Back Träff, Maja |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för pedagogik, didaktik och utbildningsstudier |
| 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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