Shakespeare- Dead or alive in school?

The purpose with our degree project is to examine if Shakespeare still is alive in school and in what way he is being used. Our study is based on these following questions:

Does Shakespeare exist in school today?

How are the other classic books being used?

Which teaching methods are used?

How is Shakespeare received by the pupils?

The methods used to be able to answer the questions are interviews with teachers and focus groups with the pupils. We carried out the interviews with six Swedish teachers and four focus groups in four different upper secondary schools.

The main result of this study shows that teachers and pupils still think that Shakespeare is an important author. Every teacher was using Shakespeare in their Swedish teaching and the expanded conception of text was established, but some of the teachers practiced it more than the others. Film was the most popular and most used teaching method. The majority of the pupilsconsidered Shakespeare and his most famous works as general knowledge. The pupils preferredto dramatize or watch films when they are working with Shakespeare and other classic authors.