Journal of Social Science Education (JSSE - Universität Bielefeld)
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Exploring civics in early 20th century Sweden: A study of final exam questions at four teacher training colleges between 1915 and 1937
Full text linkHighlights:
– Modern society is reflected in exam questions at Swedish teacher training colleges from 1914 to 1937.
– Despite not being part of the curricula, civics appear in final exams at four Swedish teacher education institutions.
– Some topics evolved, from hygiene-related questions in the 1920s to racial biology in the 1930s.
– 182 out of 924 exam questions can be classified as civics-related in Sweden today.
Purpose: This article’s purpose is to examine the manifestations of the evolving modern society and what we now identify as civics or other contemporary social issues in the final examination questions from 1914 to 1937 at four teacher education institutions in Uppsala, Falun, Lund, and Landskrona.
Design/methodology/approach: The method can be described as a qualitative text analysis, primarily of examination questions. This analysis aims to gain insights into the meaning of the examination questions and to understand which concepts of knowledge, subject ideals, and contemporary inspiration emerge in the material.
Findings: The results are that 182 exam questions from a pool of 924 questions could be interpreted as civics in Sweden today. Most are questions about economics. Another finding is that citizenship education questions increase and evolve over time. Until 1921, there were nurture-related questions regarding physical education, technology, and organisation. In the 1920s, the focus of exam questions corresponding to civics shifted to themes of thriftiness, sobriety, and hygiene. In the 1930s, while thriftiness and hygiene continued, several questions related to racial biology also emerged during that decade.
Practical implications: Our results indicate that topics that we consider to belong to civics today existed long before the subject of civics was outlined in the curriculum plans
Going beyond the model: Characteristics of civic visual literacy
Full text linkHighlights:
– Civic visual literacy is partly model generic, partly model specific, and partly content dependent
– A central aspect of civic visual literacy is moving beyond the model itself
– Entirety, expansion, and agency are three key aspects that students need to discern
Purpose: The aim is to specify the meaning of visual literacy within the context of social science education (SSE).
Design/methodology/approach: Data consist of 94 recorded small-group discussions from four learning studies in SSE aimed at qualifying students’ reasoning about societal systems and issues. Phenomenography was used to identify key aspects that students needed to discern if they were to develop qualified reading of flowcharts and scatterplots.
Findings: Civic visual literacy should be understood as partly model generic, partly model specific, and partly dependent on the content visualised. Entirety, expansion, and agency are aspects that students must discern if they are to develop a more qualified civic visual literacy and thus be able to reason about societal systems and issues in a qualified way, using visual representations as a tool.
Research limitations/implications: Four models were used. Future studies should investigate the extent to which the results hold in relation to different subject content and model types.
Practical implications: Entirety, expansion, and agency must function as focal points in SSE teaching when visual representations are used
Ways of relating philosophy to society and contemporary issues: Curricula constructions of the philosophy subject in the Nordic upper secondary school
No full textHighlights:
- Different ideas and visions on education shape the current Nordic philosophy curricula.
- The Nordic curricula differ in how they relate philosophy to today’s society and issues.
- The Finnish and Norwegian curricula have an articulated societal and normative approach.
- The Danish, Icelandic and Swedish curricula have an academic and individual-centred approach.
- A societal approach may be beneficial, but risks restricting the philosophical discussion.
Purpose: The article aims to explore the possible roles and significance of the philosophy school subject in today’s complex society.
Methodology: A curriculum theory-informed methodology, drawing on the curriculum ideologies formulated by Schiro (2013) and Deng and Luke (2008), has been applied in an analysis of the current Nordic upper secondary school philosophy curricula.
Findings: The Finnish and Norwegian philosophy curricula are oriented towards the social efficiency and social reconstruction ideologies, promoting a philosophically informed ethical stance and active social engagement. The Danish, Icelandic and Swedish curricula are oriented towards the scholar academic and/or humanism ideologies, meaning a more academic or individual-centred and less articulated relationship between philosophy and society and contemporary issues.
Research implications: The various ways of constructing the philosophy subject initiate an important philosophy didactic discussion of the possible roles and significance of the subject in relation to today’s society and contemporary issue
Pilotmonitor politische Bildung. Indikatoren zur datengestützten Berichterstattung: [Pilot monitor of civic education: indicators for data-informed reporting]
No full textEdited by Hermann Josef Abs, Tim Engartner, Reinhold Hedtke, Monika Oberle, Marie Heijens, Simon Niklas Hellmich, Valeriia Hulkovych, Lucy Huschle, and Stella Wasenitz.Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2025, pp. 594, ISBN 978-3-7425-1134-8.
Purpose: This book review discusses Pilotmonitor politische Bildung, a comprehensive edited volume that introduces a data-based monitoring framework for civic and political education in Germany.
Content: The review highlights the book’s systematic development of indicators across schools, higher education, teacher training, and extracurricular learning. It emphasizes both the methodological rigor of the project and its innovative cross-sectoral perspective.
Contribution: The volume is praised as a timely and ambitious milestone for evidence-based educational policy and research, while also pointing to limitations that suggest avenues for further development and international comparison
Shifting shores: Transformative learning with the city
Full text linkHighlights:
– Post-human methodologies support geographical experimentation in social science education
– Walking with a virtual (Deleuze) landscape manifests the materiality of the city
– Diverse temporal and spatial rhythms reveal the subject as porous
– Encounters with the city create space to think and do things differently
– Post-human approaches to transformative learning challenge detached subjectivities
Purpose: Our research unpacks transformative learning through learning-with the city and the agency of encounters. We exemplify how post-human education methodologies can make students sensitive to rhythms beyond their own, helping them to get to know Earth as more than a backdrop for human activity.
Approach: Walking the historical shoreline of Helsinki challenges rigid notions of a landscape and collapses the past with the present and future, revealing the porousness of the city and self.
Findings: Engagement with landscape remnants makes everyday transformations and entanglements tangible, engendering thinking-with the city.
Research implications: Post-human approaches to transformative learning give valuable insights into how learning is non-linear, non-representational, and takes place through meaningful encounters with the world
Practical implications: Post-human methodologies lay the groundwork for how experiments could be developed by social science educators in different localities, e.g., having students walk along a railway refusing to give way for an ever-growing city
Nurturing student engagement: Towards democratic values and attitudes
No full textHighlights:
- Transformative learning fosters reflection on values and democratic attitudes.
- Citizenship projects combined engagement, reflection, and critical thinking.
- Teachers guided projects on gender, sustainability, and anti-fascism.
- Roles shifted between facilitator, moderator, and puppeteer.
- Teachers avoided grading values, assessing skills and knowledge instead.
- Assessing transformative learning remains ethically challenging.
Purpose: This article explores methodologies used by educators in citizenship education, examining how they perceive their roles when balancing skills and values, and how they approach assessment. It also investigates how transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1978; Taylor, 2009) is reflected in practice and how outcomes are assessed.
Design/methodology/approach: A case study based on three semi-structured interviews with teachers from different European countries, focusing on classroom and assessment practices.
Findings: The study highlights opportunities and challenges in transformative approaches, especially in relation to formative assessment. Key features identified include personal engagement, critical dialogue, varied teacher roles, and integration of cognitive and affective learning. Teachers avoid directly assessing values, instead prioritising skills, knowledge, and engagement.
Research limitations/implications: Further research should examine effective formative strategies in citizenship education.
Practical implications: Teachers need training in formative assessment
Students’ participation in democratic school management: A systematic literature review
Full text linkHighlights
Empirical research on student participation in school management has increased significantly in recent years.
Countries have local and specific education policies that define student participation in school management.
Education policy defines places for student participation, but there are sociocultural barriers in the governance structure.
Student participation in school management is mostly in student councils, through class representatives, and only as an advisory body.
Students create new movements and initiatives, with practices beyond the conventional and formal at schools.
Purpose: To know and study the participation of young students and their voice in decision-making in their schools in a competitive education regulated by excellence. To understand if and how students are involved in the democratic management of schools, given that these young people are involved globally, with an active participation in society.
Design: A systematic literature review on student participation in democratic school management, identifying empirical studies from various countries with different theoretical frameworks and methodologies.
Findings: There are several democratic practices and experiences of student participation in schools, despite sociocultural barriers in some countries. However, the participatory and democratic discourses identified in schools, including those in educational policy, do not directly impact the possibilities for students to participate in decision-making
Reproduction of assimilationist thinking in Norwegian social studies: Breaking the cycle through reflective practice
No full textHighlights:
We have learned that we, as teachers and teacher educators, need to be aware of the risk of reproducing uncritical approaches in educational interventions on migration.
Without crucially reflecting on their own practice, even social studies teachers dedicated to anti-racist thinking risk reproducing assimilationist values.
The article argues that this risk can be mitigated when teachers critically evaluate their own practice as a precondition for facilitating transformative learning in their students.
Purpose: The article aims to critically reflect on a classroom situation where we, as upper secondary social studies teachers, were complicit in reproducing and soliciting assimilationist values in a student assignment.
Design/methodology/approach: We use a critical reflective model to 1) reflect on our discomfort at this complicity, 2) analyse the assimilationist values reproduced, and 3) redesign the assignment to promote inclusive citizenship.
Findings: The article exposes the risk and potential of being vulnerable about our practice as teachers and of opening the classroom as a safe space for critical thinking.
Research limitations/implications: More research is needed on how social studies teachers understand integration and how they (re)design their own assignments.
Practical implications: Without crucially reflecting on their own practice, even social studies teachers dedicated to anti-racist thinking risk reproducing assimilationist values. This risk can be mitigated when teachers critically evaluate their own practice as a precondition for facilitating transformative learning in their students
Democratic education: Comparative book review of two handbooks
Full text linkWolfgang Beutel, Markus Gloe, Gerhard Himmelmann, Dirk Lange, Volker Reinhardt, & Anne Seifert (Eds.). (2022). Handbuch Demokratiepädagogik [Handbook on democratic education] Frankfurt/Main: Wochenschau. ISBN: 9783954141869.
Julian Culp, Johannes Drerup, & Douglas Yacek (Eds.). (2023). The Cambridge handbook of democratic education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9781009071536. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009071536
