Frisk och stark med skolradion : Pedagogik och retorik i hälsoprogram 1930-1959

Sammanfattning: This dissertation deals with the history of the Swedish School Radio Broadcasting service from its start in the end of the 1920s through the 1950s. The focus of the research is radio programmes for health education. These are studied from a rhetorical point of view and a gender perspective, complemented by Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of responsive understanding.The aim of the study is to investigate changes of the rhetorical and pedagogical strategies used in these early multimedia packages, which consisted of radio programmes and booklets with pictures and text. An in-depth study of one programme and the accompanying booklet has been carried out for each decade; the 1930s, the 1940s and the 1950s. The continuing programmes in the series as well as other programmes on health education are also studied, but in less detail.The results show that the rhetoric, the pedagogy and the subjects of the health programmes changed due to changing programme presenters, Sweden’s war preparedness, the growth of the welfare state and the extension of health education as a subject in the national curriculum in 1955.The School Radio doctor in 1930-34 presented biological facts and new research findings about health-related subjects in lectures, as background knowledge for the young listeners to use in their learning about health. The listeners’ responsive understanding, their experiences of success or difficulties in implementing new ideas were presented in follow-up-programmes based on children’s letters. This acknowledged children as potential voices and actors in the modernisation process.In the 1940s the focus of the health radio programmes was more on obedience to rules for healthy behaviour. The programme series developed with increased professionalism including inserted drama scenes, interviews and songs. The programmes’ rhetoric and pedagogy continued to be authoritative and reproductive.The multitude of health programmes in the 1950s make a mix of authoritative and dialogic pedagogy. The subjects shifted towards psychology and social science and the controversial subject of sexual education. Radio plays as well as reportage from modern social health services offered new ingredients for indirect learning. Listeners were given opportunities to shape their own listening ethos, which is assumed to enhance listeners’ internally persuasive learning.While both girls and boys were represented as good models in the 1930s, girls were later marginalized, and most of the programmes represented boys.