Playtime! : en studie av lärares syn på film som pedagogiskt hjälpmedel i historieämnet på gymnasiet

Sammanfattning: Showing movies to pupils is hardly a new, innovative teaching method. However, knowledge about how film is used and why, as well as what kind of film is used is scarce. In the present licentiate thesis, eight active teachers have been interviewed on their experiences with and approached to using film as a pedagogic tool in high school history lessons. The purpose of the study is to analyze the respective teachers´ use and understanding of history, based on their opinion of film as a didactic alternative. Why do teachers to use film in class? How do they describe the way in which they work with it in concrete teaching situations? What films do they use and what makes them suitable for classroom viewing?The teachers emphasize five primary ways in which they use movies as teaching tools and the advantages in doing so: to present facts; as an example of multiperspectivism; to promote ethics and empathy; to discuss source criticism; and to arouse interest. The teachers see documentary film as an accurate, reliable form of presenting facts while considering drama more complicated and important to address in class. The study shows that the teachers feel they are left to their own devices to discover film´s potential as creators of meaning but that they rarely have the educational background or time to engage colleagues in didactic reasoning on the subject. The type of films they consider as having the most favorable effect in the classroom generally deal with war and other conflicts from a Western perspective. Most see film as an effective secondary source but a few also see it as a useful primary source. Analyzing their statements as a whole, the informants articulate that while film is widely used in high school history classes, it is done so for very different reasons.