Paper short abstract:

This paper is based in a small project on Swedish upper secondary school teachers’ views on students’ societal involvement outside school and their experiences of working with this. The material consists of interviews and the analysis re-visits a cultural analytical perspective on the school context

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based in a small research project on views among Swedish upper secondary school teachers on their students’ societal involvement outside of school and their experiences of working with this in the classroom. Through different examples, with the school strikes for the climate being one of them, the paper discusses issues such as if societal involvement among students is regarded as a resource or as a challenge by the teachers and in what ways. The material consists of interviews with upper secondary school teachers and the analysis re-visits a cultural analytical perspective on the school context.

The preliminary results show that categorizations connected to age and the position as a student or school teacher but also connected to socio-economic and cultural aspects that teachers described as characteristic for various schools and student populations they had experience from, may be of relevance for how the societal involvement of upper secondary school students is viewed and handled. The results furthermore show how teachers in various ways may use cultural analytical tools such as perspectivation, contrasting and dramatizing, when describing their own actions and the classroom practices. The paper relates this to for instance practice-based research, which is much discussed in the educational research context today and where ethnographic methods and ethnological perspectives could play a significant part.