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From 1865 up to 1981 Swedish national authorities issued regulations on design of school desks and furnishing of classrooms. This article investigates what teaching ideals that were expressed in these regulations and how they have changed over time. The article shows that the teaching ideal for the early decades of the study period where teacher centred, resulting in regulations aiming for school desks and classrooms where pupils could sit and listen for long periods of time. From the 1920’s up to the beginning of the 1960’s the regulations held on to teacher centred ideals while the desks used in schools were designed to facilitate variation and cooperation between pupils. Regulations from the last decades of the study show strong changes in teaching ideals. Desks and furnishing now should make interaction and cooperation between pupils easy, and the teacher were to be more of a mentor than a lecturer.

This study examines inter-relations between school equipment andteaching ideals in relation to the Swedish comprehensive-schoolreform process that took place between 1949 and 1972. Experimentalactivities at two specific schools, marking the beginning and end of thereform period, are analysed. The study uses a sociomaterial perspectivethat sees human actors and material objects as intra-acting componentsof networks that make up what can be termed the social technologyof teaching. The study identifies various forms of schoolequipment, and links these to the progressive ideals of the time.Dynamic relationships between the purpose of teaching and the useof teaching aids are explored, and it is argued that school equipment isintroduced and disseminated in schools in order to teach specifictopics. The overarching finding is that the relations between teachingideals and materiality are entangled, and that the meaning of socialtechnology for teaching is created through its usage. School buildings,classroom furniture, or teaching equipment alone have not provideda ready-made path to achieving teaching ideals.

The present study analyzes attitudes made manifest when media technology is used in teaching at Swedish upper secondary schools. It examines discourses related to the subject of history by comparing contemporary circumstances with those of the mid-1980s, making research in both educational history and history education indispensible to its execution. The study considers the impact of technology on human interaction as an essentially social construction. Furthermore, it addresses questions about the role media technology plays in current discourses, about the actors that are manifested in these discourses and about their didactic implications.

Since the investigation focuses on discourse, it is an interpretive work. Analytical tools have been borrowed from the field of discourse theory to facilitate a broad understanding of discourse and communication. The analysis is conducted in order to reconstruct chains of analogy and nodal points of communication in media technology and teaching, with specific attention paid to matters related to the subject of history. Secondary school policy documents, curricula relevant to each period, teacher´s periodicals and interviews with history teachers are combined to reconstruct discourses on technology in education. Interviews were conducted with six history teachers, three of whom taught in the 1980s, while the remainder began teaching in the past fifteen years. The periodicals studied are Lärarnas tiding and Skolvärlden, including every issue published in the years 1983, 1985, 1987, 2008, 2010 and 2012.

Four discourses on media technology in education have been reconstructed from this material. Two of the discourses are relevant to the mid-eighties, and have been called the discourse on the school of the future and the discourse on film, junk culture and education, respectively. The discourses reconstructed from the years around 2010 are named the discourse on the contemporary school and the discourse on good teaching. These discourses generally nurture an optimistic belief in what media technology can mean to school and teaching. The reasons for using technology in the classroom are based on notions of what is required from society or what is relevant to the students. The roles of media technology in education are affected by several groups of actors, including government officials, marketers, school leadership and teachers. The process was however never significantly affected by formal policy. One aspect central to a positive view of media technology in education was that it would improve the quality of teaching, especially in the case of history, characterized by storytelling and lecturing. Certain didactic considerations became visible in the study of these discourses, which risked being shallow and trend sensitive, insofar as it might be difficult for teachers to find suitable forums for peer-to-peer subject specific reflections on media technology.