This is an homage volume to Roger Johansson, professor of history with didactic focus at Malmö University and professor of educational sciences at Lund University. The book's chapter covers a wide range of topics and approaches to history and history didactics, which illustrates Johansson's multifaceted work as a researcher, teacher and popular educator.

This article presents a model for organising geographical concepts that aims to support teachers' choices of what to teach and how to organise a cohesive and appropriate teaching plan for school geography. The model is a result of a collaborative research process between researchers and Swedish teachers. The purpose was to explore how the core concepts of geography, which are implicit in the Swedish syllabus (orbring, 2017), can be used in teaching as powerful tools for learning (Brooks, 2018) and to develop epistemic teaching practices for school geography to counterbalance the traditional focus on content (Eriksson and Lindberg, 2016; Knorr-Cetina, 1999). During professional development seminars, teachers' experiences were linked to procedural concepts in geography (i.e. concepts that mediate specific geographical ways of thinking and doing (Lambert, 2011)), used at an organisational level in line with models introduced by Taylor (2008). This article describes a model that integrates geographical concepts and suggests how they could be used as tools in relation to each other as well as to specific content. Here, we present the considerations behind the structure and functions of the model, and teachers' reflections on producing and using it in class as a way to develop students' geographical knowing.

The Swedish school system comprises three school types: preschool, compulsory school (9 years) and secondary school (3 years). The latest curriculum reform was completed in 2011, updating policy documents and restructuring syllabuses, clarifying subject specific abilities and knowledge requirements. In 2012, national tests in geography were instituted for years 6 and 9, yielding support for equal and fair assessment, and concretizing curriculum and syllabus. National tests have proved to be the single most important factor for accomplishing a change of teachers’ teaching. The purpose of this article is to discuss teaching, progression and assessing pupils’ knowledge in the geography subject. Three didactic issues in teaching and knowledge assessment, purpose, content, and method, are furthermore highlighted.

Teachers in Social Studies can benefit from geographical perspectives in their teaching of Social Studies in elementary and high school. The aim is to connect geographical perspectives to various social processes and to integrate it in teaching of Social Studies. But how can the relevance of geographical perspectives in an education for teachers in Social Studies be motivated and to what benefits can it be internalized? I will try to answer that question in this article. This relevance is mainly, with basis in a literature study, focused on democracy, sustainable development and digital literacy. It is also relevant by giving teachers a broader teaching skill and thus they are able to help pupils achieve higher-order skills.

This chapter concerns the views of knowledge adopted in the Swedish curriculum for state schools in an international context. It addresses how geographical and spatial thinking are expressed with regard to the subject specific abilities expected of students who learn geography. The introductory section highlights the current view of knowledge in the Swedish curriculum, explains how subject specific abilities for geography have been defined and used in the Swedish context, and describes their application in state schools. Importantly, these subject abilities are considered in relation to thinking both geographically and spatially. The research that underpins this chapter was conducted using a variety of qualitative methods: specifically, interviews with key people involved in the process of drafting education policy documents and analysis of such documents used in the making of the state curriculum. Interviews have been conducted with one of the authors of the curriculum, and with others responsible for curriculum development at the National Agency for Education. Policy documents from the Swedish Ministry of Education, from the National Agency for Education, and from curriculum developers have also been analysed. This chapter includes research findings based on the analysis of such material and reflections about how these sources of evidence can increase our knowledge of thinking geographically and spatially.

A subject in school is a construction and way to organize knowledge in the curriculum (Örbring 2021). The curriculum can, in turn, be viewed at different levels (Doyle 1992) or in different arenas (Wahlström 2014). At the programmatic level, school subjects are constructed in writing through various actors and decisions. In this process, the actors make choices and evaluate the knowledge that each subject must contain. Science Studies (“naturkunskap”) is a subject in the Swedish upper secondary school which is a complex construction that draws content from several different academic disciplines. The purpose of this study is to investigate how science studies were constructed on a programmatic level in the 2011 curriculum, and what values ​​of knowledge were made by different actors (or stakeholders) in this process. The theoretical starting point is curriculum theory in terms of levels (Doyle 1992), arenas (Wahlström 2014) and pedagogical device (1990) and vertical and horizontal knowledge (Bernstein 1990; 1999). Also relevant are theories regarding knowledge in school subjects, such as those by Deng and Luke (2008) and Carlgren (2020). Furthermore, Klafki’s Didaktik analytical questions will be applied (e.g. Sjöström & Eilks 2020). The method is qualitative and draws inspiration from an earlier study of geography education (Örbring 2020). This study consists of analyses of documents from the process of making the steering documents for the curriculum, such as minutes, drafts, comments, meeting notes and working materials. A content analysis will be made of these documents, found in the archives of the National Agency for Education. Expected findings are about describing how the Science Studies subject was constructed, what knowledge is included, as well as whether there were/are different values, traditions and conflicts in the subject. Our hypothesis and preliminary analysis – based on reading of the syllabus as well as own experience – is that in Science Studies there is a subject identity tension between being a natural science subject (based on biology, chemistry, physics and earth science) and a societal- and environmental-oriented social science subject (based on themes such as sustainable development, energy and health issues). Related to this tension is the question of what role the Science Studies subject has in the Swedish education system. Science Studies can be seen as a continuation of the science subjects in compulsory school, or alternatively, a value-oriented interdisciplinary subject. In the presentation we will especially focus on the implications of the curriculum and Didaktik analysis for teachers and teaching.