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ENGLISH SUMMARY
Introduction
This thesis attempts to highlight the contemporary conditions and processes
of education in order to define what kind of education dominates the 21st
century School. What mentality and pedagogy are governing the design of
the 21st century School? How can the historical perspective help to explain
the conditions and processes in contemporary education? This thesis studies
these questions by analyzing and interpreting active educational discourses
from the beginning of the 21st century.
Methodology
The study is based on Paul Ricoeur´s critical hermeneutics. His approach
assumes that discourse is comprised of structures that one must describe and
explain before one can understand them. It is a type of hermeneutic that
integrates different methods, in order to formulate a possible but not an
arbitrary interpretation.
In order to understand what kind of education dominates the 21st century
School, I have studied 351 news articles in the Swedish newspaper
Västerbottens-Kuriren, which date from 1 September 2005 to 31 August
2006. The news articles organize education into three levels of schooling:
preschool, elementary school and upper secondary school. The interpretative
concepts that the articles cover are mentality, inherent pedagogy and
historical memory. The term mentality is a given collective figure that
frames educational processes. The term inherent pedagogy refers to the
inherent educational processes that shape the mentalities. Finally, historical
memory is the recognition that historical knowledge and the history of
consciousness is produced and reproduced. Historical memory is a collective
phenomenon that long ago lost their original functions and survives mainly
through automatic transference from generation to generation.
The interpretation process has been carried out at different stages, in order to
describe, explain and understand active educational discourses. This
interpretation applies three complementary methods - text analysis,
hermeneutic interpretation and critical discourse analysis. The interpretative
process ends in a concrete reflection that summarizes the present study.