Ann Grubbström

Are teachers and students ready for the new middle school geography syllabus in Sweden? Traditions in geography teaching, current teacher practices, and student achievement

The article examines the relationship between selective traditions in geographical education, what middle school teachers choose to emphasise in geographical education, and student achievement. The study, conducted in Sweden, is based on observations made by students in teacher training programmes, interviews with teachers, and analyses of a test administered to middle school students. It shows that selective traditions in geographical education are strong, resulting in a focus on country-related knowledge and map-reading skills. Both teachers and students seem unclear about what other subject-specific skills geography teaching provides. Furthermore, students have difficulty achieving a high level of geographic reasoning. The authors argue that a subject-specific language in geography is important in both teaching and assessment. They stress that students need more practice in geographic reasoning, since this is required by the new curriculum and in the national test in geography for Year 6 (i.e. pupils in the age range 12–13 years). The study adds to earlier research by highlighting Swedish middle school teaching, which is a neglected field within curriculum studies, and by using a combination of methods to analyse the impact of selective traditions.

Gender contracts in Estonian coastal farming families, 1870–1939

This paper deals with families that lived on the North West coast of Estonia from 1870 to 1939. This period involved a successive transition to a monetary economy for the family farmer and an increasing need for cash to be able to pay rents and debts arising from land purchases. A farm perspective is used to show the complexity of effects of societal changes on the gender division of labour. The study highlights how practices evolve within a specific spatial context in terms of adjustment of gender contracts. It is demonstrated that husbands and wives on farms involved in fishing and seafaring negotiated flexible gender contracts, in which women were flexible and took over mens work. Such contracts evolved when the men were absent from the farm due to fishing and seafaring duties. Flexible gender contracts developed if other solutions, such as hiring farmhands, were impossible to arrange. Small farms could develop a gender contract for collaboration at sea in which women accompanied their husbands on fishing trips. The results, which are based on interviews and archive sources, indicate that the smaller the family farm, the more inclined women were to take over traditional mens work. It is argued that different gender contracts are parallel phenomena and that they often seem to be temporary, since they are evaluated in relation to the standard gender contract that acts as a norm in society.

Land Purchase and the Survival of Swedish Ethnicity in Estonia

There is a growing interest in issues of ethnicity. For example, many people wishing to learn more about their background do so by studying the history of the ethnic group they belong to. For this reason, research focusing on ethnic groups over longer periods of time is of particular interest at present. Despite the importance of the relationship between the opportunity to own land and the survival of an ethnic group, relatively few studies have systematically focused on this question within the field of historical geography. It is the contention of this paper that such a link needs to be established, and that evidence relating to the Swedish minority settled in Estonia points to the value of such an approach.