Högskolan i Skövde

Young people’s conversations about environmental and sustainability issues in social media and their educational implications are under-researched. Understanding young people’s meaning-making in social media and the experiences they acquire could help teachers to stage pluralistic and participatory approaches to classroom discussions about the environment and sustainability. The aim of the article is to explore the characteristics of meaning-making in young people’s conversations about environmental and sustainability issue in social media, more precisely in an online community. The study takes a public pedagogy and citizenship-as-practice approach and uses Epistemological Move Analysis. The conversation are shown to be argumentative, sophisticated, elaborative and competitive and create an educational situation in which facts about the world and moral and political values and interests are confronted and argued. The findings raise questions about pluralistic and participatory approaches and the staging of classroom conversations in environmental and sustainability education.

Teachers find it difficult to conduct political controversial conversations in the social science classroom and due to an increased use of social media in educational settings new challenges and possibilities are raised. The use of social media causes fundamental changes to the role of the learner who becomes a producer and consumer – a prosumer – of educational content. With a social media perspective and a didactical focus on learning in democracy and political action the article discusses didactical conditions and possibilities of political controversial conversations in social science education and derives a set of didactic strategies. When approaching the classroom as a diverse ideological public space, recognising the students as political agents and using a social media perspective it is possible to balance the function of education – socialisation, qualification and subjectification – and at the same time stimulate societal engagement and political action.

Los profesores tienen dificultades para llevar a cabo conversaciones políticas controvertidas en el aula de ciencias sociales y debido a un mayor uso de los medios sociales en los centros educativos nuevos retos y posibilidades se plantean. El uso de los medios sociales provoca cambios fundamentales en el papel del estudiante que se convierte en productor y consumidor - un prosumidor - de contenidos educativos. Con una perspectiva de los medios de comunicación social y un enfoque didáctico en el aprendizaje en la democracia y la acción política el artículo discute las condiciones didácticas y posibilidades de conversaciones polémicas políticas en la educación de las ciencias sociales y concluye un conjunto de estrategias didácticas. Al acercarse a la sala de clases como una diversa espacio público ideológica, el reconocimiento de los estudiantes como agentes políticos y el uso de una perspectiva de los medios de comunicación social, es posible equilibrar la función de la educación - la socialización, la cualificación y la subjetivación - y al mismo tiempo estimular el compromiso social y la acción política.

Participation as a pedagogy and democratic value turns out to be a critical element in students’ completion of school. Completed education is a regional development project in which a survey has been conducted in order to identify successful strategies to promote completed education in school. In an analysis, in the context of the survey, with an emphasis on school and participation as a pedagogy and democratic value, several findings are shown. It turns out that the importance of participation manifests itself through an emphasis on the societal and democratic mission of school; school ethos; the value praxis of school; pedagogical approach; and viewing the pupil as capable. It is, in more detail, shown that it is particularly crucial to understand the completion of school as a pedagogical problem; create sustainable institutional structures not bound to one person; and to make sure that students are participants in their own studies.

2014 års Demokratiutredning har i uppgift att analysera behovet av och utarbeta förslag till åtgärder för att öka och bredda engagemanget inom den representativa demokratin. Utredningen ska även föreslå åtgärder i syfte att stärka individens möjligheter till delaktighet i och inflytande över det politiska beslutsfattandet mellan de allmänna valen. En särskild uppgift för utredningen är att belysa frågor om ungas politiska representation, delaktighet och inflytande. Inom ramen för denna uppgift ska utredningen bl.a. se över vilka effekter som befintliga forum för ungas inflytande, såsom ungdomsråd och ungdomsfullmäktige, har haft för ungas möjligheter till inflytande och delaktighet.

Erik Andersson har på uppdrag av 2014 års Demokratiutredning skrivit en underlagsrapport om Skövde kommuns arbete med ungas delaktighet i de politiska beslutsprocesserna. Erik Andersson är lektor i pedagogik vid Högskolan i Skövde.

Research on young people’s political socialization has had an adult-centered top–down bias in which young people are considered incomplete and in need of the right upbringing. The article attempts to balance this bias. The aim is to introduce and argue for another normative approach – situational political socialization. Four theoretical elements constitute its basis: (1) the political, (2) contingency (the principle of the public sphere), (3) space and place, and (4) situation. In the contingent western digital media society marked by cultural dissemination, individualism, and the erosion of traditional institutions, situational political socialization represents a normative basis for a research approach which is open, action-oriented and contextualized, viewing young people as political actors in their own right.

Kunskap och politik hänger ofta ihop och kan skapa kontroverser i undervisningen. Kontroversiella frågor har inga givna svar, och uppfattningarna om i vilken grad man ska anse en fråga kontroversiell skiljer sig ofta åt. Frågorna har en påtaglig samhällspolitisk relevans, vilket betyder att människor med skilda perspektiv och åsikter står mot varandra – både i samhället och i klassrummet.

Själva kontroversen handlar alltså om att det finns konkurrerande uppfattningar, inte bara om en frågas kunskapsbaserade svar, utan också om hur den ska värderas och vilken betydelse den ska ha. Vilka frågor som bör hanteras som kontroversiella varierar från tid till annan och från kultur till kultur. I den här boken belyser författarna olika förutsättningar och erfarenheter av att arbeta med kontroversiella frågor i relation till det internationella forskningsfältet controversial issues education.

En av slutsatserna är att en lärare behöver kvalificerade kunskaper och kunna göra didaktiska överväganden, för att kunna hantera en kontroversiell fråga i undervisningen. Det krävs förmåga att ta hänsyn till de omständigheter som finns i varje skola, och till de kunskaper, värderingar och erfarenheter som eleverna bär med sig.

Projektrapport från ett samverkansprojekt mellan Högskolan i Skövde, AB Skövdebostäder och Skövde kommun.

In this article we argue that young people’s political participation in the social media can be considered ‘public pedagogy’. The argument builds on a previous empirical analysis of a Swedish net community called Black Heart. Theoretically, the article is based on a particular notion of public pedagogy, education and Hannah Arendt’s expressive agonism. The political participation that takes place in the net community builds up an educational situation that involves central characteristics: communication, community building, a strong content focus and content production, argumentation and rule following. These characteristics pave the way for young people’s public voicing, experiencing, preferences and political interests that guide their everyday political life and learning – a phenomenon that we understand as a form of public pedagogy.

The aim is to analyse the institutional character of, and the on-going communication in, a net community organised by and for young people. This is achieved using terms of conditions for situational political socialisation – a situation in a specific context in which the participants, within the battle between different groups attempting to organise society through interaction and action, adopt political preferences and skills. The thesis builds on agonism, a political theory in which controversy and struggle are viewed as prerequisites for human life that uses language as a political act. The net community, as an institution, contingently depends on political rebirth via action and communication. The use of language creates places that give the institution meaning while at the same time the institution claims the participants and their creation of meaning. Black Heart, the analysed net community, is a quasi-public space for and by young people aged between 14 and 28 years. It is a cultural community where political conversations take place among other kinds of communication. The institutional character of Black Heart and ten politically controversial conversations are analysed, using a case study method that applies web content analysis and computer mediated discourse analysis. There is a strong institutional framework operating in the political text conversations of Black Heart, the participants are governed by the institution and the participants govern each other. The political communication is characterised by revealing and arguing for political interest. To challenge is the dominant category of political action which constitutes political subjects that are offensive, argumentative and polemic. Political communication and the on-going interaction generate an educational situation in which the participants are expected to be content oriented, argumentative, expressive, communicative and polemic.