Democracy in Education

Education is a basic welfare pillar. Education in schools influence and is influenced by society and politics. Democratic education is the alternative that the students seek in many countries where there is an authoritarian education system like Greece my country of origin. The idea of the present Master thesis topic emerged out of my studies in the Master program of Global studies at Lund University. The research is about democracy in education. The aim of the research is to trace democratic values in primary schools in Sweden through in depth semi-structured interviews with the teachers. The region that the research was conducted is Lund city. The method of analysis is thematic analysis and various previous researches, Swedish and international have been used throughout the thesis especially in the part of the discussion. The results include all democratic values traced in primary schools, examples and applications of them by the teachers, the inspiration of these democratic values in an individual basis (experience or training) and the connection of education with the phenomenon of globalization. After reading the present thesis one can learn the basics on democratic education and the status of democratic values in Sweden (2010). Many questions and further research emerge for future studies. Chapter 1, gives an introduction to the field and a historical overview of democratic education. Chapter 2 and 3 consist of the background of theories that are used when needed in correlation with the results. In chapter 4, the core of the theoretical framework of the thesis is included and indicators of democratic values in schools are analyzed. In chapter 5, the research problem and research questions introduce the reader to the research part. Although the part of methodology is discussed in chapter 5,the design of the method used (semi-structured interviews) is discussed in chapter 6. In chapter 7 the