Skolämnet Hem- och konsumentkunskap på 2000-talet förutsättningar för elevers möjlighet till måluppfyllelse

Sammanfattning: Background People are faced with a variety of consumer choices every day. If they do not have adequate and appropriate knowledge their choices create a greater risk of negative effects for the environment and the economy, and also for the individual's personal health and economic circumstances. Home and Consumer Studies (HC-studies) provides school pupils with educational opportunities on which to base their choice decisions.Aim The overall aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze the impact of frame factors such as, for example, teachers’ qualifications, classrooms, lesson time, interdisciplinary work and group work on the educational experience, focusing on pupils' opportunities for goal achievement in an HC-studies context.Methods Two different methods were used to obtain data, 1) surveys and 2) classroom observations. One nationwide survey were sent out in 2010 to people working with HC-studies (N=385) and two surveys were sent out in 2014, one to people working with the five subjects HC-studies, Physical Education and Health, Chemistry, Physics and Biology (n=388), and one to head teachers (N=216). All three surveys involved municipal and independent schools. The observations were carried out in four different schools in grades 5, 8 and 9, when pupils worked in the kitchen units and were made using video and audio recording. In total, 44 pupils participated.Results The surveys showed that the HC-studies teacher qualifications were higher in municipality schools compared to independent schools (86% vs 39%). Classrooms with 4 – 10 kitchen units were more common in the municipality schools than independent schools (94% vs 71%). Among teachers in the five subjects HC-studies, Physical Education and Health, Chemistry, Physics and Biology, as well as Head teachers, about half stated that the school they worked in, or had the responsibility for, used interdisciplinary teaching in the area of nutrition and health. Regarding barriers to interdisciplinary teaching, teachers and head teachers both considered a lack of planning time and scheduling to be the biggest problems.Video and audio recordings showed that lesson time, in combination with the amount of content to be delivered during the lesson, led to stressed and insecure pupils, and both teachers and pupils seemed to have a strong focus on the end result; the meal. Some pupils used a variety of strategies to change the cooking in order to have more chance of completing the process on time. Four different ways in which pupils worked together in the kitchen units emerged: 1) integrated, 2) expert, 3) divided, and 4) parallel group work. Integrated group work seemed to provide opportunities for learning because pupils communicated with each other, discussed how they would divide the cooking within the group, who should do what and how they would work so that everyone could take part in the cooking. The other three types of groups did not seem conductive to learning. Many pupils in these groups did not communicate and were not able to show their skills and creativity. It also emerged that, if they got the chance, pupils chose tasks about which they already had some knowledge.Conclusions This thesis highlights various conditions shaping pupil opportunity to reach goals in the subject. The study raises many questions about the extent to which pupils around the country have the same opportunity to reach goals in the HC-studies syllabus.