Umeå University's logo

By exploring the didactical considerations of experienced teachers, the overarching aim of this dissertation is to contribute knowledge about what contemporary migration marked diversity in schools means for history teaching. This is done through two sub-studies and semi-structured interviews with 20 teachers at the lower and upper secondary levels. The methodological foundation of the dissertation is a reflexive thematic analysis, and its primary analytical tool is educational philosopher Gert Biesta’s educational functions: qualification, socialization, and subjectification. In three empirical chapters, different dimensions of teachers’ didactical considerations in classrooms characterized by migration- marked cultural and ethnic diversity are addressed. The focus is on teachers’ teaching intentions, perceived opportunities and challenges, and strategies.This dissertation shows that teachers’ descriptions within the framework of seemingly similar intentions might mean different things. Two clusters of functional intentions emerge within a field of tension. This tension is most evident between socialization and subjectification, and within the domain of qualification. The results show that teachers’ perceptions of the significance of migration marked diversity signal more than value judgments. Opportunities and challenges emerge in both overarching and specific ways, constructed in relation to different (functional) intentions. A central result of the thesis consists of 10 strategies that reflect teachers’ ideas on how to handle challenging circumstances related to teaching history in classrooms characterized by migration marked diversity. The strategies show that teachers exhibit a wide range of ideas on how to overcome specific contextual challenges, with several ideas reminiscent of strategies identified in previous research. However, some of the strategies reflect approaches that have not been prominently featured in previous research. For example, the limitation of content can occur in a covert or open manner in an interaction or confrontation with students, and teachers’ ideas about accommodating diverse and conflicting voices are carried out with different functional intentions. Another result is that there are tensions between history didactical considerations and approaches suitable from a language didactical perspective. According to some teachers, situating teaching close to a history with which students have an emotional relationship can create poorer conditions for students to develop the critical skills that are requested. In other cases, teachers see it as advantageous to situate teaching close to students’ history, as reference knowledge can make it easier to contextualize.While previous research has described a “deficit discourse” – where equivalence is drawn between perceptions of the “immigrant student” and the “problem student” – teacher statements within this study does not entirely support such a discourse. This result has specific connections to history didactics. In relation to specific intentions, such as qualifying students’ understanding of the use of history, the lack of reference knowledge regarding European history among some students can be perceived as a learning opportunity for all students, illustrating how opportunities are constructed in relation to teaching intentions. This dissertation highlights the patchwork of (functional) intentions that teachers collectively attribute to their teaching, often in close contact with what they perceive to be the students’ needs.

Perceived inconsistencies in history teachers’ epistemological beliefs have been a recurring theme in research on epistemic cognition. In this article, we explore how teachers discuss history's epistemology when presented with different scenarios where epistemology might be an issue. A study design aimed at capturing teachers thinking in different contexts was adopted, and through semi-structured interviews with history teachers in Quebec and Sweden we could follow changes in nuance by analyzing teacher statements in relation to their ideas about the relationship between the past itself and the (teachable) history about the past, when discussing these issues in relation to different scenarios. The results point to teachers articulating rather well-adjusted and consistent epistemological beliefs when discussing the matter at a theoretical level while tending to adapt these beliefs — probably for pedagogical and practical reasons — when they discuss their own teaching and specific classroom situations. We argue that the teachers rarely seem to be notice the changes in their epistemological reasoning, but changes tend to go from complicated thought to more straightforward when complexity in context increases.

By interviewing 15 teachers with experience of teaching history in multi-ethnic classrooms and utilising the concept of “objectivistic” and “critical” epistemic expressions, Lundberg explores teachers’ perceptions of a multi-ethnic context’s meaning for their history teaching. A close analysis of four upper-secondary teachers shows relatively clear epistemic expressions in their description of their context-bound teaching. The analytical framework regards the teachers’ expressions about the relationship between the past and the history of the past. Lundberg argues that despite teachers’ expressed similarities in teaching intentions regardless of epistemic position, these similarities should not be overstated since various teaching intentions, such as developed tolerance and analytical skills, are filtered through differing epistemic lenses. One conclusion is that the process of “epistemic filtering” causes conceptually similar teaching intentions—by some teachers underlined as of particular importance in a multi-ethnic context—to hold differing meanings with differing functional potentials.