Elevers bilder av skolan. Vad elever berättar om och hur lärare och lärarstudenter reflekterar och samtalar om skolan utifrån elevers bilder

The overall aim of this thesis is to examine how pupils in their pictures depict what it means to be a pupil in school today, and to explore the reflections and discussions that the images give rise to among teachers and student teachers. A starting point is the assumption that images are carriers of aspects of knowledge, meaning and sense that cannot always be presented through spoken or written language. The thesis consists of two parts. The first part concerns the main theme of the study: what is it like to be a pupil in school today. The data material consists of a collection of about 450 pictures made by pupils of different ages, and living in different parts of Sweden. The second part of the thesis consists of reflections, individually and in groups, made by 98 teachers and 60 student teachers concerning 65 pictures from the collection. Some of the pictures have been analysed through a theory of visual semiotics. A socio-cultural perspective was used in analysing the individual reflections and discussions from teachers and student teachers. Theories of reflection and speech were used, as well as theories of frames and possibilities for reflections in a school context. When the teachers had the opportunity to reflect upon and discuss the pupils’ pictures, many of them were initially amazed at what was actually told in the pictures. Compared to the teachers, the student teachers are generally closer to the pupils in age, and they were not quite as surprised over the stories that were told in the pictures. Both teachers and student teachers frequently related to their own experiences in the group conversations. The conversations were categorised based on focus, and how teachers and student teachers positioned themselves in the conversations. The analyses show that the majority of the teachers and also student teachers recognise aspects of the pictures from the time when they themselves were pupils, but also from their own children’s experiences of school. These shifts of position from teacher to parent, or to their own school days as a pupil, gave the teachers access to a different way of seeing