The school has a political and democratic mandate to teach and establish basic democratic values that our society is based in the teaching of students. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a number of four teachers interpret the meaning of democratic values. What is their personal inter-pretations which according to previous research proved to be open to interpretation? The aim was to see if there was a noticeable difference in the teachers interpretations towards each other.

Another aim of the study was to gain insight on how teachers believe that they conduct their lessons to teach and establish basic democratic values. Are there any links to previous research that says that the teaching of fundamental values are not equal?

The study's questions will therefore examine:

・ What do four different teachers consider the meaning of the basic democratic values?

・How do the teachers in the social studies field do systematically for the students to aquire basic democratic values and knowledge?

・ What are the differences in their interpretations of the democratic meaning of values and way of conducting their teaching in this area?

To get answers, qualitative methods have been used through interview. As a theoretical approach, Laclau and Mouffes approach of discourse analysis has also been used.

The conclusions I reach in the analysis of my material shows that the four teachers had a variety towards each other in their interpretation in the meaning of the basic democratic values. As a conse-quence was the teachings in the fundamental values not equivalent because they dealt with different areas of the values in their respective teaching.