Citizenship Education from a Swedish Perspective

Lisbeth Lindström


The purpose of this article is to highlight some of the international research conducted in the field of citizenship education, and discuss the contents of people’s citizenship that are visible in the steering instruments of the Swedish compulsory- and upper secondary schools such as the school law, curriculum and syllabi. Of interest has been the study on how these control instruments describe and illustrate the concept of citizenship and the related concepts. The study highlights the content that is expected to be taught compared with the actual experiences from citizenship education research.

In this research, textual analysis is used as a method to review the structure of the text and to scrutinize the content.

From the analysis of the national steering documents, it is possible to argue that young people in Sweden have the opportunity to both learn about democracy and be active citizens. It can also be argued that students have the opportunity to be a part of the democratic working framework in practice, which can prepare them for active participation in society later in life. However, this research does not give any answer to whether what is political rhetoric in documents is also the educational outcome of the pedagogical practice.

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