A Context-Based and Democratically Formative Social Studies Didactic
PhD student: Line Groth Nielsen
Institution: Ilisimatusarfik – University of Greenland
The Ph.D. project emerges from the new curriculum for social studies in Greenland’s primary school, which came into effect on August 1, 2023.
In the new curriculum, social studies and history have become two separate subjects in Greenland’s primary school, with social studies now placing a greater emphasis than before on enabling students to become active participants in democracy. The curriculum for social studies, for example, states that “The purpose is to contribute to students acquiring competencies so they can take a reflective stance towards society and its development” and that “Students should gain competencies for active participation in a democratic society”.
With the new curriculum, social studies aligns itself with a tendency in other countries, where the role of social studies is to prepare students to become democratic citizens. Social studies teachers in Greenland are thus faced with a new task, for which a context-based and research-based social studies didactic has not yet been developed.
In Greenland, there is generally a lack of subject-specific didactic research. This means that primary school teachers mostly rely on subject-specific didactic research from other contexts, often from Denmark. Consequently, teachers’ subject-specific didactic foundation is not developed with consideration for the students or the society and culture to which the students belong. This issue also applies to social studies didactics, which is currently a non-existent research field in Greenland.
The purpose of this Ph.D. project is to address the urgent need for subject specific didactic research by contributing with a social studies didactic project on democratic formation that is applicable in practice.
The project has two main objectives:
- Firstly, the project will uncover the challenges and potentials that social studies teachers face in their practice of developing students’ democratic formation.
- Secondly, the project will generate knowledge about how social studies didactics that promote students’ democratic formation could look like in Greenland.
The project employs a design-based and participant-involving approach, which means that research will be conducted in close collaboration with social studies teachers in several selected schools across Greenland. The role of social studies teachers is to be didactic co-designers with the intention of developing concrete, context-based, and thoroughly tested teaching principles – “didactic designs” – that can promote the democratic formation of Greenlandic children and youth.
Granted: DKK 2.256.641
