En balans mellan perspektiv : Samhällskunskapslärares undervisning i kontroversiella samhällsfrågor

Sammanfattning: The society of today is getting more polarised, and people is keeping themselves to their bubbles of opinions. This is a development which threatens the trust between citizens, an important building block in a functioning democracy. The school is one of the best places for youngsters to meet different ideologies, opinions, and perspectives in different political issues. Especially in the social studies subject, which according to the Swedish curriculum is supposed to let pupils analyse political issues. In past studies many teachers are talking about a fear of teaching in controversial political issues. The purpose of this study is to figure out how social studies teachers act when controversial public issues appear in the education, what kind of challenges they experience in those situations and describe any possible connections between the teacher’s strategies and the challenges. The study was done through semi structured interviews with four social science teachers. The result of the study shows that all the teachers interviewed used a strategy when the brought in facts to their education. Three of the teachers did it more clearly through an objective presentation of the issue. All of the teachers also used strategies where they included different perspectives and balancing them, giving them the same importance, in different classroom discussions. When it was considered necessary, the teachers privileged one perspective. These strategies had a possible effect on the challenges the teachers met since the teachers did not experience fear of teaching controversial public issues and rarely saw any lack of the competence in themselves in relation to controversial public issues. Although the teachers that participated in the study saw obstacles in their daily work caused by the Swedish curriculum of the social studies subject and student related challenges.