Students’ influence over teaching content in modern languages : – the teacher’s view on the question of implementation

In a similar spirit as in the Convention on the Rights of the Child’s 12th article (has entered into force in the Swedish law on January 1 st, 2020), the Swedish curriculums for primary and secondary schools state that implementation of students’ influence is part of the teacher’s mission. This study chooses to focus solely on the influence which students exercise over the teaching content. By interviewing eleven modern language teachers from four different primary and secondary schools, it aims to find out the reasons put forward by the interviewed teachers to consider their work on implementing student influence satisfactory or not. Moreover, this study aims to find out which advantages or obstacles the interviewed teachers see in the implementation process. This study makes use of pragmatic theories and follows a pragmatic method, featuring a pragmatic discourse analysis. The results of the study show that, most teachers are inspired by the curriculum in ways that encourage the involvement of students in the choice of teaching content. They also believe students are more motivated and learn better when they are involved. However, a couple of teachers would need to refresh their knowledge of implementation of students’ influence as part of their mission. Some teachers do not see the students as capable actors in lesson planning and tend to lack awareness of the motives of the implementation in terms of meaning making