Teachers and Social Class Orientation: An Empirical Note Based on Comparisons with Different Social Classes in Sweden

Abstract

In focus in the present study are value orientations among Swedish teachers in certain societal questions. What are the dominant orientations among teachers regarding basic social issues such as economic conflicts and political preferences? And how do such dominant orientations among teachers relate to the positions among different social classes and strata? Answers to such questions could be of interest when relating them to the actual functioning of the Swedish educational system, where a consistent pattern is that education favors children from the middle class and that children from the working class have less opportunity to use education for their own purposes—in terms of social mobility and so on—despite the last few decades of educational reforms [24, 33, 22]. To this might be added the fact that education—at least at the upper secondary level—seems to be linked with a strong predominance of right-wing positions among pupils as presented in the results of school elections. Thus, it seems that the educational system in practice has a conservative impact in terms of political and social issues. Is such an impact consistent with the predominant value orientations among the teachers or does it occur in spite of the orientations among teachers?