Students’ Perceptions of Democracy, Politics, and Citizenship Preparation in Upper Secondary Social studies

In this project, I have investigated how 16 – 17-year-old students enrolled in the obligatory subject social studies in Norwegian Upper Secondary school perceive and relate to the concepts of ‘democracy’ and ‘politics’, and how they view the role of social studies in terms of preparing them for citizenship. This is a mixed methods study, utilising individual and group interviews, as well as a quantitative survey.

In this presentation, I will focus on the second sub-study, namely students’ perceptions of the concept of politics and their conceptions of the relationship between people and politics. This study has implications for citizenship education, particularly in view of research from the UK and other Western democracies raising concern about young people’s levels of political interest and participation.