Det digitaliserade svenskämnet?: Digitalism och digital teknologi i utbildningspolicy och i svenskämnespraktiker på högstadiet

Abstract in English

In this dissertation, I examine digital technology in schools and in the subject of Swedish against the backdrop of a broader societal trend of digitalism. The aim is to investigate how digital technology is regulated and valued in education policy through discourses about digital technology, and whether, and if so how, these discourses are recontextualized in lower-secondary instructional practices within the subject of Swedish. The data consists of education policy documents and materials from practices within the subject of Swedish, specifically 36 assignment instructions, 570 student texts, a number of teaching materials as well as a number of assessment materials. The analysis of the material focuses on discourses about digital technology and how these are recontextualized in practices within the subject of Swedish.

The results show that digital technology is regulated through eight educational policy discourses: the tool discourse, the competence discourse, the digital text discourse, the social interaction discourse, the information discourse, the safety discourse, the critical stance discourse, and the dualism discourse. However, not all of these digital technology discourses are recontextualized in instructional practices within the subject of Swedish, which means that the regulatory reach of education policy is narrowed in practice. At the same time, vague policy formulations are clarified in the practices, specifying which digital texts are written and which digital services are used, while stressing the importance of information management and source criticism. Much of what happens in practices within the subject of Swedish is digitally mediated, yet much is also familiar: the student texts and assessments are traditional.

Overall, the dissertation highlights that the subject of Swedish is situated between two movements: an optimistic digitalism movement and a growing, critical counter-digitalism movement. The results indicate that digitalism still permeates education policy, meaning that the idea of digital technology as a major transformative force remains prevalent. However, in practices within the subject of Swedish, these grand ideas about digital technology are less apparent, and digitalization mostly seems to be a matter of using digital tools. At the same time, these tools, specifically digital services, raise security and privacy issues that are not substantially addressed in the practices within the subject of Swedish.