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Education Inquiry
Vol. 3, No. 4, December 2012, pp. 471–475
EDU.
INQ.
Curriculum studies of mothertongue
education in Sweden
Introductory remarks
Åsa af Geijerstam*
Over the past 40 years, issues concerning mother-tongue education have been discussed
in many countries. Its function, content and identity have been the subject of
dynamic discussions among teachers as well as researchers and research students
(e.g. Dixon, 1976; Malmgren, 1996).
The establishment of a new research field in Sweden
The field of research that concerns mother-tongue education in Sweden has traditionally
been divided into three disciplines and has, accordingly, relied upon three different
research traditions: literature, language (i.e. Nordic languages) and pedagogy.
However, among researchers within the field a need for a more coherent alternative
to these three different disciplines grew ever more imminent. As a consequence, the
research area “Curriculum studies of Swedish” was established at Lund University in
the 1990s, with Tor Hultman as the first professor within the field.
Following this, a graduate school of “Curriculum studies of Swedish” was initiated
in Lund in 1995, while in 2002 a graduate school with doctoral students from all over
the country was also established at Växjö University. The application rate for this
graduate school was high, which may be seen as a sign of the importance of this field
where the traditional borders between the three traditions are crossed.
The relevance of the establishment of this new research field cannot be underestimated.
With this, an intention was formulated to bring together not only different
research traditions within the school subject of Swedish, but also to draw on research
in other subject areas in school. Teaching within all subject areas is conducted in
Swedish, and the area “Curriculum studies of Swedish” was thus intended to include
issues of language within different subject areas.
Apart from the two graduate schools that were launched, a network was established
in 2003. This network, “The national network for curriculum studies of Swedish”
*Department of Education, Uppsala University, Sweden, e-mail: asa.af.geijerstam@edu.uu.se.
©Authors. ISSN 2000-4508, pp. 417–475
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