Democracy and politics in upper secondary social studies: Students’ perceptions of democracy, politics, and citizenship preparation

Abstract

This thesis comprises three articles and investigates students’ perceptions concerning the theme of democracy and politics in social studies in upper secondary school in Norway. It uses a multiple methods approach to study qualitative and quantitative aspects of students’ perceptions.

Article I investigated 23 16-year-old students’ understanding of the concept of democracy, using focus groups. Article II investigated nine 16-year-old students’ perceptions of the concepts of politics and conceptions of the relationship between people and politics, using individual interviews. Article III investigated students’ perceptions of citizenship preparation in social studies and factors related to these, using a quantitative survey.

The findings show that the students perceived ‘democracy’ and ‘politics’ both in terms of top-down and bottom-up perspectives. Moreover, the findings indicated that students perceived social studies as valuable in terms of preparing them for current and future citizenship and that their interests and aspects of instruction were associated with these perceptions. The findings are relevant for developing social studies education sensitive to students’ perspectives.