The pedagogy of education in political parties

The project aims to study internal education in the Swedish parliamentary parties. "Education" is given a broad definition that includes all forms of organized practices that are staged in order to contribute to the learning processes of the participants. Our research interest is teaching practices and hence the study lies within the realm of pedagogy with special reference to didactics, even though that concept is usually associated with school research. The importance of political parties in modern representative democracies like the Swedish system can hardly be overestimated. Still, the internal arrangements for learning organized by parties have escaped research in pedagogy, popular education research as well as political science. Our project addresses this gap. We will conduct a survey in order to examine the study and training arrangements within the parliamentary parties. The survey will locate the main learning and teaching practices in the parties and these will be thoroughly analyzed. This analysis focuses on the participants´ and organizers notions of the studies, how they make sense of it, and how it is organized. Overall, the design intends to contribute to a thorough pedagogic and didactic illumination of political parties´ study and teaching activities.