Debatten om svagpresterande elever : En undersökning om hur svagpresterande elever framställs i den svenska skolpolitiska debatten år 2018–2023

Sammanfattning: The language used to talk about students has an impact on their performance in school. One student group mentioned in the educational policy debate is the weak-performing students. The purpose of this essay was to examine how weak-performing students are portrayed in the educational policy debate from 2018 to 2023. The aim was to investigate the problem representations and subject positions that emerged in the debate. The method used was discourse analysis with Bacchi's (2009) WPR approach and the concept of subject positions. The empirical material consisted of articles published in Dagens Nyheter, Aftonbladet, Dala-Demokraten, and Svenska Dagbladet. A primary subject position that emerged regarding weak-performing students was that they are failures. The overall problem representation that emerged was that they are failures because they do not reach the passing grade threshold in school. Proposed solutions include reforming the grading system, valuing practical knowledge and skills in school, reforming the school choice system by introducing the principal of transparency, mixing student groups, adopting stricter methods in school, and increasing resources to students with neuro psychological diagnoses (NPF). In these solutions, five discourses can be identified: the institutional, cognitive, social, fostering, and medical discourse. Different problem representations and subject positions emerged in different discourses. Besides being portrayed as failures, other subject positions that emerged of weak-performing students was that they are portrayed as disadvantaged, with less analytical ability, weaker theoretical intelligence, more practical oriented, immigrants, children of immigrants, those with low-educated, unengaged, and economically disadvantaged parents, boys, with diagnoses, as well as disruptive and troublesome.