Vilket svenskämne? Grundskolans svenskämnen i ett lärarutbildningsperspektiv.

Which Swedish? Swedish as a school subject, from the perspective of teacher training describes how a group of future teachers of years 1 to 7 of the compulsory school relates to various concepts of the subject Swedish through three courses delivered at the School of Education. The study has the aim of analyzing the students’ construction of the subject of Swedish as taught in school, and to analyse teacher education in Swedish from an institutional point of view. The empirical material is made up of policy documents applicable to teacher education, planning documents written by teachers and texts written by students in the course of their studies, as well as three interviews with each student. The theoretical framework is didactic and socio-constructivist. The history of the subject Swedish is dicussed as a struggle for and against a democratic mother tongue education.

The students are critical of the lack of integration, between the theoretical and practical elements of the university education, and between faculties and subjects. In the practical work they miss dialogue around the content of the teaching and long-term planning. The picture they give of teaching based on activities, individual factual research and the reading of literature as individual experiences and skills training – they speak of it as ”an old Swedish subject” – means that they have lost the possibility of discussing how the content of a common project can be generated and analysed in their construction of what they call ”a new Swedish subject”. The strength of the Swedish courses lies in exchange of experience and dialogue around the elements of subject theory and analysis of other teachers’ teaching. Its weakness lies in the lack of connection to the students’ own teaching experiences. The work done at the school of education has neglected the students’ need to learn by teaching and discussion of that teaching. This in turn is consistent with the fact that the school of education’s cooperation with teachers at schools has hardly begun.

The thesis finally discusses a possible mother tongue subject for early school years which transcends the view of language ability as a skill, a Swedish subject where language development and the school’s dual tasks of promotion of democracy and knowledge are held together.