Published teaching materials or selfmade materials in teaching of civics in the grades 4-6? : Pupils learning through the teacher's perspective

The purpose with this study is to examine how teaching materials that are published by a publisher or teaching materials that are made of the teacher itself are being used in civics classes. I will also examine which one of the teaching materials benefits the students own learning the best according to the teachers. The study will also examine if the teacher’s education or lack of education in civics have any impact of the use of teaching materials. The study will focus on teachers that teach the grades 4 – 6 and in the subject civics. There is some research done about civics and it shows that the subject is pretty wide and unclear. Research of how teaching materials are being used in civics is done to some extent but research about how teaching materials impact pupils learning according to teachers are minimal. This motivates why my study is being done on teacher in middle school since the studies that’s been done is mainly done on teachers in upper secondary school. The results are analyzed through the sociocultural perspective and some different theories connected to transformation. The results are discussed through the previous research that are a part of this study. Semi structed interviews are the method that are being used to investigate the purpose of this study. The results show that teaching materials are used as a foundation in the education of civics. But then there is a difference of how the teachers use the material that they have done by themselves and the other teaching materials. The different teaching materials are used differently in the various areas of social studies depending of the teachers own choice. But the results show that the teaching material that the teachers make for themselves is often based on published teaching materials. The result also shows that teachers have different opinions of which teaching material that have the best impact of pupils learning. The teachers also thought differently when it came to if teaching materials created opportunities for pupils to learn on their own with help from teaching materials. But they all thought that the pupils learned the best with support from the teacher. The teacher’s education is shown to have less impact on the use of teaching materials and the teachers experience have a bigger impact of how teaching materials is being used. Teachers with more experience used published teaching materials less.