ÄMNESINTEGRERING PÅGYMNASIENIVÅ – ÄR DET MÖJLIGT? : Samhällskunskapslärares subjektiva friutrymme i relation till möjligheter och hinder för ämnesintegrerad undervisning

Sammanfattning

This study focuses on civics teachers’ opinions and experiences of subject-integratedteaching. The study aims to learn more about teachers’ autonomy and how it affects theirchoice to teach subject-integrated or not. More specifically, the study is concerned withteachers’ way of interpreting the national steering documents and how it affects their choiceof methods, but also which aspects, circumstances, and conditions – in this study calledframework factors - teachers find as either opportunities or obstacles for subject-integration.The findings of this work are based on interviews with five teachers who teach civics at thesame upper secondary school in the north of Sweden.The study shows that teachers have different interpretations of the national steeringdocuments, which results in how and to what extent subject-integration is conducted varies.At the same time subject-integrated teaching seems to be regarded as a teaching methodwhere a lot of planning and preparatory work is required. Moreover, teachers emphasize that astrong consensus between the teachers is necessary for cooperation to function well. Inaddition, teachers must be willing to relinquish some of their autonomy when workingsubject-integrated, which many of them think is a problem. Teachers want a large amount ofautonomy and they do not want anything or anyone to limit it. They want to choose thecontent and methods that they think fit best and at the same time they want to be able toredirect their teaching based on what is happening in the world. All these reasons combinedresult in teachers not teaching subject-integrated to a particularly large extent.