Teaching about migration on a scientific base

Teachers’ knowledge-building in social studies in Swedish upper elementary school

Abstract

This article examines two conversations in a study-circle on migration. The conversations are part of the first phase of a subject didactic project between social studies teachers at upper elementary school and researchers at a university in Sweden. In the conversations, which are moderated by two researchers, the teachers are expected to build their own knowledge about migration and how teaching about migration can be carried out. Previous research on social studies teaching in the earlier school years has shown that the connection to substantive scientific knowledge is weak. Through deeper theoretical knowledge and an increased didactic repertoire, teachers can in turn give students access to specialised knowledge, i.e. knowledge that helps them deal with society's major issues.

The article aims to investigate how the teachers' knowledge building can be made visible and understood, as well as what function the researchers fulfill in the conversations. Both conversations have been analyzed semantically with tools from Legitimation Code Theory. Through the analysis, we follow how scientific substantive knowledge about migration is transformed and linked to teachers' experiences and more general everyday understanding of the phenomenon. The analysis shows that there is a connection between an everyday understanding and a scientific understanding in the part of the conversation where the teachers build their own knowledge about migration, but that it is more difficult to achieve a connection between scientific knowledge and developing the teaching content. Here, a focus on the content, on what should be taught and why, seems to make it easier for teachers to make connections to specialized knowledge, while a focus on how-to questions and who should be taught does not do so to the same extent.