Morality at the margins: a silent dimension of teaching and learning

Abstract

Teaching is a moral endeavour. It transmits moral messages based on values and expectations. This paper explores the relationship between school practice and the democratic values endorsed in the Swedish national curriculum. A lunch‐time episode illustrates the discrepancy between the national curriculum’s ethical values and their realization in practice. This discrepancy problematizes the decentralization process in Swedish schooling. Furthermore, it suggests that episodes at the margins of school practice may be just as important to the moral curriculum of school as the knowledge‐related elements conventionally deemed to be the core of the curriculum.

Keywords:

• citizenship education
• curriculum research
• deliberative communication
• moral values
• Swedish education

Notes

1. The names used in this paper (teachers and school) are pseudonyms. I have translated all extracts from my fieldnotes.

2. See also Jackson et al. (1993).

3. See also Skolverket (2000a, b, 2001a, b), and Tham (2000).

4. See also Linde (2000), and Orlenius (2001).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katarina Norberg

A former pre‐school teacher, she is especially interested in inter‐cultural education and teacher action research. Her recent research focuses primarily on the practical application of constitutive values in pre‐school and compulsory school.