Skolutrustning och undervisningsideal: socio-materiell förändring inom svenskt skolväsende 1865–2010

Abstract in English

This thesis examines how changes in school equipment relate to changes in teaching ideals in the Swedish school system between 1865 and 2010. Three cases of changes in school equipment are examined in three sub-studies. The first sub-study explores how national guidelines for school desks covering the period 1865–1981 implicitly expressed specific teaching ideals. The second sub-study examines equipment requirements that arose in connection with changes in teaching ideals during the Swedish comprehensive school reform of 1949–1972. The third sub-study analyses how teaching ideals changed in conjunction with the introduction of new media technology in schools during the 1980s and in 2010. The thesis’s overarching research question addresses the significance of the origin and direction of change initiatives when school equipment and teaching ideals change. The source materials used in these studies consist of archival material from schools and authorities, printed official documents, teacher magazines, the local daily press, and teacher interviews. The thesis’s theoretical framework is based on a socio-material perspective whereby schools are studied as socio-material networks, and teaching ideals and school equipment shape each other. Additionally, concepts such as ‘historical path dependency’, ‘the grammar of schooling’, and ‘horizontal and vertical change initiatives’ also contribute to the analysis. Methodologically, the study follows a source-pluralistic and source-critical approach, which is supplemented by discourse analysis (in one sub-study). The results indicate that school equipment should not be seen merely as passive or neutral proposals for teaching. Historically, equipment has supported specific teaching ideals and has hindered or concealed others. While many teaching ideals have clearly changed during the period of investigation, older ideals have been reproduced over time because of ‘the path-dependent use of equipment’. However, school equipment has also changed based on how it is used or the ideals it is inter-related with. The results also indicate that the significance of the origin and direction of the change initiative shifts in character if such initiatives are vertical or horizontal to the school. Vertical change initiatives tend to function primarily as boundary setters for internal change within the school. Horizontal change initiatives, on the other hand, appear to take on great significance as trendsetters for the direction these changes take.