Elevers perspektivbyten i svar på uppgifter från det nationella provet i samhällskunskap

Abstract

Developing students' critical thinking is an important task for Swedish schools. Especially in the social studies subjects, where issues of democracy and human rights always are present. In both national and international educational science research there are however some uncertainties concerning how critical thinking manifests among students. The article sheds light on a specific component of critical thinking, namely the ability to alternate points of view. Initially, classical theoretical literature on critical thinking is used to discuss this component. The main part of the article uses students' own descriptions of societal challenges to show more precisely how alternating points of view are manifested in student answers. To our help, we have a unique empirical material in the form of data from the Swedish national test in civics for year 9. 600 student responses from one question are analyzed with the ambition of finding students' ability to see, and discuss, social issues from different points of view.