It is all about (re)production. A study about eight teachers' perception of the knowledge mission of friluftsliv in compulsory school in Sweden

Abstract

The teaching of friluftsliv in Swedish schools is being questioned by both the Swedish School Inspectorate and researchers. Friluftsliv education within Swedish compulsory schools seems to either be under-represented, where only activities such as orienteering and ice skating are carried out, or the teaching is reproduced, which means that the teaching entails the same content from year to year. A content that is questioned due to its nature of carrying values from a non-educational discourse, creating an ambivalent educational purpose for friluftsliv and its knowledge mission in Swedish compulsory schools.

This thesis aims to investigate teachers’ perception of the knowledge mission of friluftsliv education within the subject of physical education and health in Swedish compulsory schools’ later years (years 7-9, students between the ages of 13-15) and how these perceptions can affect the knowledge mission of friluftsliv education.

The data were gathered through eight semi-structured interviews and were analyzed through Basil Bernstein’s concepts of the pedagogic device and pedagogic discourse. The findings suggest that the teachers' perception of the knowledge mission of friluftsliv correlates with the dominant values of the pedagogic discourse of friluftsliv. This results in them reproducing these values repeatedly, making the thinkable teaching more rooted and the unthinkable (teaching not thought of yet) more unthinkable. Which results in the lack of innovation and change of the knowledge mission of friluftsliv education in Sweden.