Fakta, normativitet eller pluralism? : Didaktiska typologier inom gymnasieskolans geografiundervining om klimatförändringar

In education about climate issues teachers make choices. What is of most importance? To know how the green house effect works in a natural scientific way or to know about the political processes that can help us find a solution? Habits, or selective traditions, answers the questions why, what and how does teachers do when teaching about climate issues. In this study selective traditions are investigated.The purpose of this study is to investigate and identify selective traditions among the Swedish geography teachers when it comes to teaching about global warming. A discussion about the implications of the selective traditions for the education from a pragmatic perspective, inspired by John Dewey in his work: “Democracy and Education is also included.The empiricism of the study consists of interviews where teachers tell about their ways of teaching about climate issues. The result is presented in the form of selective traditions. The study identifies three separate didactic typologies in teaching about climate issues. The natural science typology tradition which focuses on facts, the normative which focuses on changing the student’s attitudes and the pluralistic which focuses on the student’s democratic development. All three have different implications in a pragmatic perspective. These three didactic typologies have different implications for the democratic dimension in education. Typology 1 does not encourage the student to take part in debates about climate change. Instead the student only receives natural science facts. In Typology 2 it is the teacher or some other ruler who decides what attitudes to adapt. But in Typology 3 the student is encouraged to, and gets the opportunity to develop his- or hers own attitudes.