Gymnasieelevers attityder till sociologiämnet : En enkätstudie om sambandet mellan kön, kulturellt kapital och attityder

Sammanfattning

The purpose of the study is to describe and hypothetically explain students' attitudes to the subject of sociology in upper secondary school in Sweden based on students' (a) cultural capital and (b) gender. This is explained with the help of Pierre Bourdieu's capital theory, and also his perspective on gender. The study aims to cover the knowledge gap that exists in the field of teaching sociology in upper secondary school in Sweden with quantitative methods. The study uses a questionnaire to collect data and linear regression to analyze it. This perspective has, to our knowledge, never been done in a nordic context before, although studies on civic and citizenship education exist. Framing of questions: How do students' attitudes to the subject of sociology differ between gender categories in upper secondary school? What is the connection between students' cultural capital and their attitude to the subject of sociology in high school? The sociological implications of this study is that the number of books in the students home tends to affect the attitudes towards the subject. But other aspects of the students' cultural capital, such as parentes education, art and classical music in the home aren’t statistically significant. Another sociological implication is that female students tend to have more positive attitudes towards the sociology subject compared to male students. The sociology didactic implications of this study indicates that the number of books in the home in combination with gender has a connection with attitudes to the subject. Thus sociology teachers should focus on this. The awareness that a certain part of the cultural capital influences the students' attitudes means that the teacher can work actively to counteract this. For example by encouraging reading early in school, to create an open classroom climate and using various forms of examinations.