This is the limit : A study on teachers´view of the Swedish school´s democratic assignment and work against xenophobia

The purpose of this study is to examine how social science teachers regard the Swedish school's democracy assignments and opinions that conflict with those described in the school’s value system. The study aims to examine how teachers in social science view the school's democracy assignments and value system, how permissive social science teachers are during student discussions, and how social science teachers relate to pupils with xenophobic views. To achieve this goal, five semi-structured interviews have been conducted in which the respondents share their experiences of pupils who express xenophobic views and how they have chosen to act in these situations. The results shows that social science teachers believe that the democratic assignment in itself is clear. A problem with the democratic assignment however is that the value system needs to be interpreted, which brings a risk that different teachers choose to interpret the assignment in different ways. Furthermore, the results show that the respondents of the study have a varied experience of students who in some way expressed xenophobia. The respondents' actions in these situations can be linked to a number of the working methods or perspectives presented in the study's theory section. The conclusions that can be drawn from this study are thus that the respondents' experiences, actions and perceptions of the researched issues vary, yet all emphasize the importance of the social science topic in order to reinforce the future generations to become responsible and democratic citizens.