Bonden i skolan – granskad ur en faktamässig och pedagogisk synvinkel

Detta är en Magister-uppsats från SLU/Dept. of Animal Nutrition and Management

Sammanfattning: From the late 1800s to late 1900s, the degree of urbanization increased from 15% to 80%. Today, 85 % of Sweden´s population live in cities (Svanström, 2015). As little as 172 700 (Jordbruksverket, 2015a) of Sweden´s total 4 962 000 employed people (SCB, 2015c) work with farming in different contexts. This means that only a small part of the Swedish population has a connection to the Swedish animal production. When children grow up they learn from their relatives, other people and school. If the children´s relatives do not have knowledge about farming, the school becomes an important source of knowledge. To maintain the public´s knowledge about food and animal production, it is important that children at a young age are given true and reality based fact. Only then, the children can form their own values. In 2014, The Federation of Swedish Farmers launched a website and teaching material about farming called The farmer in school (Bonden i skolan). The website is addressed to children at the age of 6-12 years. The aim with this study was to examine the teaching material from a factual and educational point of view. The following five hypotheses were the basis for the study. - The farmer in school describes the Swedish animal production in a beautifying way that makes it difficult for the pupil to understand the connection between the living animal and the food we consume. - Facts in The farmer in school are difficult to understand for the pupil because of terminology. - There is a problem to include The farmer in school in the everyday teaching, the usability is low. - The farmer in school adapts and simplifies the information in order to make it easier for the younger pupils, making it difficult to gain understanding of the routines on a farm. - The farmer in school is used as a promotion for Swedish products. To test these hypotheses both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. Two classes of school children, one class of eleven years old students from Nynäshamn and one class of ten years old students from Uppsala were interviewed after using The farmer in school. The students drew two pictures, one before using The farmer in school and one after. Facts in the teaching material were compared with data from independent data sources describing animal production. The outcome of this study showed that The farmer in school explain the Swedish animal production differently depending on species. According to the author of this study, the pig breeding is thoroughly explained from birth to slaughter without beautifying elements. For chicken and broilers, the information is inadequate. Despite that parts of the animals' lives are absent in some species the students understand the connection between the meat in the store and the animal that we breed. The websites language is easy to understand with some difficult words and is not perceived to be adapted for the younger students. With the help of Bloom's taxonomy, the students' knowledge was evaluated. In the class from Nynäshamn 28% of students showed the level remembering 48% understanding, 16% application and 8% analysis. In the class from Uppsala 63% of students showed the level knowledge and 37% understanding. By reviewing each student's drawing from the first and second occasion differences linked to The farmer in school could be seen in 20% of the drawings. Only from one student's drawing, it was possible to deduce a difference related to Swedish-produced food. Only 13% of students from Nynäshamn and no student from Uppsala mentioned the benefits of Swedish production. All this together shows that The farmer in school presents facts in an objective way and allow the students to create their own values. However, differences between the Swedish and foreign animal production are demonstrated which can be said to be marketing for the Swedish production. The low response rate of the teacher questionnaire is too small basis for drawing general conclusions about the teachers´ opinion of The farmer in school. The teaching material had 19000 unique users from the launch in autumn 2014 until the end of the same year. This indicate that The farmer in school has been included in everyday teaching at many schools.

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