”Politic – it´s something big” : A survey of young peoples perception of politic

The school is an important arena for young people to acquire knowledge and perceptions about politics. In order for students to gain a deeper understanding of politics, knowledge about politics as a subject, concepts, and phenomena is required. With the assumption that people's perceptions of a phenomenon influence on how they act in relation to the phenomenon, makes it interesting to examine what young people perceive about politics. The purpose of this study is, based on a phenomenographic approach, to investigate how students perceive the phenomenon of politics and to demonstrate at what levels they relate to it in comparison to a theoretical definition of the concept of politics. The ambition is for the study to serve as a foundation for how teachers can approach their teaching of politics, with the aim of creating instruction that stimulates political interest and engagement. To answer the research questions, a qualitative method with semi-structured interviews has been used. Five students have participated in the interviews, and the collected data has been processed and analyzed based on a phenomenographic approach. The results show that an institutional view of politics is clearly prominent in the students' perceptions, as parties, parliament, and government are recurring in their descriptions of politics. At the same time, there is variation in the perceptions, where two out of five students have a slightly more complex and broader understanding, while three students express a comparatively narrow view of the phenomenon. Two out of five consider politics to be something closely related to their everyday lives, relating it to their situation and immediate environment, while two out of five see it as something distant. The results also show that students with a narrower perception of politics have lower political interest and engagement than those with a broader conceptualization. The students' perceptions of politics align with the theoretical definition of the concept but are closest to the area of institutions related to the public sphere. The different dimensions of politics, policy, and polity emerge to varying degrees in the students' responses. All students have perceptions that encompass all dimensions, but different students emphasize different aspects. Some responses focus more on laws and regulations (polity), while others are more oriented towards the process of political action (politics). All students also bring up examples of different political content (polity)