Vad, vem och hur? En översikt av teman, informanter och metoder i forskningen om svenskämnets nationella prov i gymnasieskolan

Abstract

The national test has been carried out yearly in all upper secondary schools in Sweden since 1996. Thousands of students take the same test, which has the main purpose of supporting equal assessment and aiding teachers in their grading.

The purpose of this review is to present research that has been done on the upper secondary school’s national test in the subject of Swedish. We have found 21 publications, published between 1996 and 2016, which we consider cover the research history of the test. Our time frame runs across two different curricula for the Swedish upper secondary school, Lpf 94 (from 1994) and Lgy 11 (from 2011). However, the national tests from the new curriculum Lgy 11, are still classified. Therefore, researchers have been unable to use these tests as research material. Due to that, most researchers base their studies on tests carried out within Lpf 94. Even so, two publications do make analyses regarding the curriculum from 2011.

In this review, we break the publications down and analyse them through three categories: themes, informants and methods. The themes presented in the research are reading ability, writing ability and assessment (the oral part of the exam has been excluded from this review). The informants are teachers, students and different institutions which concern the Swedish school system. The methods used in the analysed research are text analysis, compilation of quantitative data, interviews, analysis of a study and observations.

We have found that all the research belongs to one of the two national subject categories: the humanities and social sciences. Within the humanities most research has been focused on writing ability and been done with students as informants by using the methods text analysis and compilation of quantitative data. Within social sciences most research has been focused on assessment and been done with teachers as the informants by using compilation of quantitative data as the method.

Due to the impo