Critical thinking, social belonging and democratic participation: Vocational students civic Bildung and the enacted curricula

Current challenges to society, as the war in Europe, the pandemic and global warming highlights the importance of civic Bildung for all students. Students in Swedish upper secondary vocational programs (VET) are disadvantaged in terms of civic education.

At the same time, they are described as less likely, compared to academic students to participate in democratic processes.

The project’s aim is to contribute with knowledge of VET students’ civic Bildung – critical thinking, social inclusion, and political agency – through school subject civics, history, religion and science, which are generally ascribed importance in citizenship education.

Three researchers, with expertise in VET as well as science and social studies education, are interviewing students in 6 classes from 3 different VET programs through the 3-year education.

To understand what is made available to the students through the four subjects, the pedagogic recontextualising field is studied by examining how teachers enact the curricula.

The framework of pedagogic rights, as well as pedagogic codes by educational sociologist Basil Bernstein is deployed in the analysis in combination with intersectional perspectives.

Citizenship is closely related to social categories, as class and gender, and the distribution of knowledge, and of power and positions in social hierarchies is important perspectives if we are to understand VET students civic Bildung.