PhD Candidate in Music Education

Presentation
All children in Sweden encounter music in their primary school education. According to the timetable that came into force for grades 1–7 in 2019, all pupils in compulsory school will receive 230 hours of music. For many children who grow up in Sweden, this is the only music education they receive.

In 2011, a new curriculum came into force, Lgr 11, which entailed new curricula in all subjects in compulsory school and a new grading system. All students are now assessed according to the grade school F-A where A is the highest and means twenty credit points while F is the lowest and means zero credit points. These credit points are then used to apply to upper secondary school. Therefore, equivalence is a key concept when it comes to grading.

My own interest in grades and assessment in the music subject in primary school has been aroused gradually during my active years as a teacher, both through discussions with colleagues and during the processes I myself went through when I assessed the students I taught. My dissertation work aims to investigate what positions and considerations that active music teachers make when they make assessments in their subject and when they grade their students. The purpose is to show the music teachers' complex tasks as assessors and graders and to deceive to increase the equivalence of the music subject's grading.