Johan Samuelsson

Historical thinking about sources in the context of a standards-based curriculum: a Swedish case

ABSTRACT The increased interest in basing teaching on disciplinary thinking has had a profound impact on the syllabus for history in Sweden. Within this context, we examine how students demonstrate one aspect of disciplinary thinking in history, namely reasoning about historical sources. The material used is written answers to an assignment about historical sources in the national test in history for year 6. The analysis shows that many students are able to show at least some aspects of disciplinary thinking about sources, though the vast majority has problems with contextualising the source in the assignment. One explanation put forth is that the syllabus is not yet fully enacted in teaching practices.

A national hero or a Wily Politician? Students’ ideas about the origins of the nation in Sweden

ABSTRACT The topic of this article is how primary school students express ideas about the ‘origins of the nation’. The study is based on texts written by Swedish students aged 12–13 about a historical event well embedded in Swedish national mythology, the rise to power of Swedish ‘founding father’ Gustav Vasa. The analysis is inspired by James V. Wertschs concept of schematic narrative templates. The main finding of the study is that the students mainly structure their answers along one of two different narrative templates; either a kind of historical master narrative with strong foundations in traditional Swedish history culture, or a more generic story about the founding father as a ruthless or corrupt politician, which is arguably influenced by presentism.

‘Because Christian was mean and killed innocent people!’: Swedish primary school students’ causal reasoning about the origins of the nation

ABSTRACT The topic of this article is how Swedish primary school students aged 12–13 use causal reasoning when they explain a historical event that is usually considered the ‘origin of the nation’. The study is based on student texts about the rise to power of Gustav Vasa, who is traditionally portrayed as the ‘founding father’ of Sweden. The analysis of the students’ causal reasoning takes into account how many, and what kinds of, causal factors the students use. The main finding of the study is that one category of students give causal explanations that adhere very close to the traditional image of the event, with Vasa as an important and heroic agent pitted against an antagonist, king Kristian II. Another category of students instead give generic explanations with very little historical context. Of these, the former category shows greater causal complexity than the latter. In both categories, there are instances of students failing to causally connect agents to the event, suggesting that teaching practices may need to address this issue.

History as performance: pupil perspectives on history in the age of ‘pressure to perform’

ABSTRACT The development a standard-based curriculum in History can be related to the school reforms where ‘performance’ are crucial principles. The aim is to analyse pupils’ perspectives on the relation between their views on historical knowledge and the national test in History and grading. When the pupils in this study – directly after taking a national test in History – were asked to reason about what historical knowledge is, another subject emerged: a collective memory subject. History as ‘performance’ emerges clearly in connection with the pupils’ discourse on grades and History, which has an emphasis on ‘working’, ‘writing’, and ‘doing homework’ to get a better grade in History. The disciplinary knowledge content specified in the curricula does not correspond to pupils’ experiences of what the central historical knowledge is in national tests and grading. It is apparent that disciplinary knowledge content is ‘under pressure’ in the age of performance.

The Swedes and their history

The aim of this article is to analyse adolescents’ views of Swedish history. A small number of adults were also included in the study. The analysis shows that, regardless of the age of the informants, Sweden is portrayed as an exception from the world through its legacy of a long peace (in spite of a war-torn distant history) and through its enjoyment of progress, democracy and prosperity. We interpret this as a result of a history culture in which schools as well as other institutions produce a common, conflict-free history, which may be challenged in an emerging neonationalist era.