Resumen de Classroom wall charts and Biblical history: a study of educational technology in elementary schools in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Sweden
This article considers the emergence of classroom wall charts as a teaching technology in Swedish elementary schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, using Biblical history teaching as an example. There has been some work done internationally on wall charts as an instructional technology, but few studies have looked at their use in Sweden. With a theoretical approach informed by Martin Lawn's understanding of teaching technologies, this article shows that wall charts became both an important teaching object and a means of introducing new pedagogical ideas. A study of the official school inspectors' reports shows that wall charts had spread to most local schools by the end of the nineteenth century, while an analysis of Biblical history textbooks and teaching guidelines shows that visual aids were increasingly integrated into the school curriculum. The wall charts themselves were initially imported, mainly from Germany, but by the end of the nineteenth century they were being produced in Sweden for the domestic market, in keeping with the National Romantic ideals of the day as well as with the new awareness of the importance of adapting images to use in classroom teaching.
