Att skildra mångfald i läromedel : hur en inkluderande intention kan skapa underordning

• This article explores the construction of gendered ethnicity in someof the characters portrayed in readers used in the lower classes ofthe Swedish comprehensive school. The purpose is to show howwhat I call “critical intersectional discourse analysis” can be used ontextbook content. The analysis sheds light on underlying ideals andvalues in hegemonic discourses, and the very complex ways thesevalues combine intersectionally, to construct the characters in theanalysed texts. Text and illustrationsare seen as interacting parts ofa whole and as part of a greater societal context. At the same time,the analysis demonstrates how historical and contemporarydiscourses influence text content. These discourses create contradictorymeanings and identities, as well as certain power relations,within the text as well as in relation to different readers. Thepreferred reading inevitably transforms the majority’s ways ofbehaving into a generalised norm. The configuration of characterspresented in the textbooks thereby stereotypes and marginalizescharacters who differ from majority norms, creating a coding ofthe world into “us and them”. The focus in this study is on the waycertain children presented in the readers are constructed asdeviations, who are implicitly contrasted to an unarticulatedheteronormative adult Western norm, and therefore inevitablypositioned as subordinated in relation to that norm.

Ämnesord

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

discourse analysis

ethnicity

gender

generation

intersectionality

readers

textbooks

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)