The increased interest in basing teaching on disciplinary thinking has had a profound impact on the syllabus for history in Sweden. Within this context, we examine how students demonstrate one aspect of disciplinary thinking in history, namely reasoning about historical sources. The material used is written answers to an assignment about historical sources in the national test in history for year 6. The analysis shows that many students are able to show at least some aspects of disciplinary thinking about sources, though the vast majority has problems with contextualising the source in the assignment. One explanation put forth is that the syllabus is not yet fully enacted in teaching practices.

This paper takes an interest in how schools and teachers dealt with new demands when teaching rapidly went online during school closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic, in what we see as an example of emergency remote teaching. The aim is to make visible how schools and teachers dealt with the demands that they were confronted with while under hard pressure during emergency remote teaching, and what discursive frames are used in upper secondary teachers’ pedagogical considerations. Fifteen teachers of history, mathematics and Swedish (five from each subject) are followed in recurring interviews between April 2020 and September 2020, resulting in a total of 41 interviews. A narrative approach is used in the analysis and results show how teachers made large efforts to maintain teaching in what can be described as a crisis organization. Three main discourses are identified: (a) a strong assessment discourse; (b) a relational discourse; and (c) a compensatory discourse. The findings are discussed in the light of educational policy based on the so-called Nordic model and the idea of one-school-for all, and in relation to what becomes possible to teach as well as what is not possible to do in times of crisis.

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The aim of this article is to analyse adolescents' views of Swedish history. A small number of adults were also included in the study. The analysis shows that, regardless of the age of the informants, Sweden is portrayed as an exception from the world through its legacy of a long peace (in spite of a war-torn distant history) and through its enjoyment of progress, democracy and prosperity. We interpret this as a result of a history culture in which schools as well as other institutions produce a common, conflict-free history, which may be challenged in an emerging neonationalist era.

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