Grunden till ett demokratiskt medborgarskap : Medieanvändning för årskurs 1-3 i samhällskunskap

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this paper is to examine what media literacy means to primary school teachers. The purpose is also to examine how teachers work with the intent of aiding students' development of critical thinking, how they perceive the student’s media literacy abilities and how they perceive the social studies curriculum regarding media. There is previous research and literature indicating that media literacy is an important skill to work within school and also that teachers are a meaningful force for developing media literacy. The previous research and literature show that competent media literacy is important for a student's future life in a democracy but also as a user of the internet. There is a lack of research examining media literacy in years 1-3 in social studies and how teachers perceive media literacy in these years.Thus, making the paper’s purpose and questions relevant to the research field. The study is based on a phenomenographic research approach and was conducted using qualitative,semi-structured interviews. Six teachers from different schools participated in the interviews. The response was then analyzed using pragmatism, which is Dewey's theory of learning. The main result shows that the teachers use conversation as a method for aiding the development of students' critical thinking. The conversations start with news or students' own experience, for example, conflicts during breaktime. The result also shows that the teachers perceive the student’s critical thinking skills as lacking and point to the student’s young age, limited worldview and social experience as to why. Finally, the result shows that the teachers perceive the curriculum for social studies as difficult to define, that it has a too high and abstract level for years 1-3. They point to the same reasons as earlier as to why this is the case.