Demokratisk kompetens. Om gymnasiet som demokratiskola

Demokratisk kompetens. Om gymnasiet som demokratiskola

Aktivt medborgarskap är ett ledord i svensk demokratipolitik. Jämlikt deltagande i politiken är ett annat. Skolan anförtros en viktig politisk roll i detta avseende. Läroplanen påbjuder att alla ungdomar på ett likvärdigt sätt skall förberedas till ett aktivt samhällsliv. Oavsett valet av gymnasieprogram ska alla förberedas till en samhällsroll som ”ansvarskännande individer som aktivt deltar i yrkes- och samhällslivet”, bland annat genom att läsa samma obligatoriska kurs i samhällskunskap. Men räcker det för att göra ungdomar jämlikt aktiva? Från tidig ålder socialiseras de enligt olika normer i sin uppväxtmiljö. De har dessutom olika intressen och talanger. De har också större möjligheter än någon tidigare generation att välja utbildning efter egna preferenser. I ”Demokratisk kompetens. Om gymnasiet som demokratiskola” undersöks 2684 18-åriga gymnasisters inställning till aktivt medborgarskap. Utifrån analysen tecknas en bild av ungdomars demokratiska kompetens, som avslöjar stora skillnader mellan elever som valt olika utbildningsvägar i gymnasiet. Dessutom presenteras nya rön om hur två olika dimensioner av demokratisk kometens – politisk självförtroende och demokratikunskaper – påverkar synen på olika former av politiskt deltagande.

Democratic Competence. Democratic Learning in Gymnasium/Upper Secondary School

Does upper secondary school manage to educate all pupils to active citizenship? The Curriculum includes twomain tasks, which are to prepare students for active working life and for active citizenship, and this study focuseson whether all study programmes offer equal possibilities for students to develop their democratic competence ornot.Two dimensions of democratic competence are studied: civic knowledge and political efficacy. Civicknowledge appears to be the main predictor for future voting in all study programmes. There are majordifferences in civic knowledge between the programmes, and besides, knowledge is strongly correlated todeliberative teaching methods, general cognitive skills and parents SES. Compared to civic knowledge, politicalefficacy does not differ much between programmes. Instead, gender turns out to be a powerful predictor; youngmen are more self-confident concerning their political skills, compared to young women.Civic knowledge is a strong indicator for future voting and legal demonstrations, and hinders illegalactivities such as blocking traffic. Political efficacy is a strong indicator for party membership, legaldemonstrations, voting and blocking traffic. The significance of both civic knowledge and political efficacy askey dimensions of a person s democratic competence is the main contribution of this study to the field ofparticipation research. The democratic assignment of school has mainly focused on civics, besides of democraticvalues, student influence in the learning process and student participation in school democracy. Supportingstudents confidence in their own abilities is one of the goals expressed in the Curriculum, and the results of thisstudy show that there are good reasons for deepening our understanding of how to build up students confidenceover their capacity to take an active part in the society.The analysis is based on Swedish data on 18-year-olds of the year 2000 IEA Civic Education Study,(n=2645). Data was collected in a representative sample of 88 upper secondary schools. Student participationrate was 76 percent.