Teachers' interpretation and application of curriculum and other governing documents in municipal adult education

A teacher  talking to adult students.

Municipal adult education (MAE) consists of both basic and upper secondary adult education, special education for adults and Swedish for immigrants. Teachers working in these activities have a variety of laws and steering documents to relate to in their work. There are laws, an adult education curriculum and various syllabuses.

MAE has undergone, and will undergo, changes in recent years. MAE has gained an increasingly important role in society for integration, among other things, and now the goals of MAE as part of the employer's skills supply are strengthened. Today, there are a total of about 400,000 students in adult education. Nevertheless, there is a limited amount of research in the field of adult education, particularly with regard to the work of teachers. It is important to investigate and gain knowledge about teachers' planning and teaching in relation to the broad role of adult education and its organisational conditions.

This research project investigates how teachers in MAE interpret and apply curricula and other steering documents in their planning and teaching. In a first step, a survey was carried out aimed at those who work as teachers in all different parts of MAE. In a later part of the project, a larger number of teachers were interviewed.

The project is carried out by Linköping University in collaboration with the University of Gothenburg and on behalf of the Swedish National Agency for Education. The project includes professors Andreas Fejes and Per Andersson, who are both project managers, and Johanna Köpsén, all at the Division of Education and Adult Learning, Department of behavioral science and learning at Linköping University and Mattias Nylund at the Department of Pedagogy and Special Education at the University of Gothenburg.

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