The aim of this essay was to investigate in what manner sexuality is and has been portrayed and represented in course books used in religious studies in Swedish upper secondary school. In order to study the progression of how Swedish education has portrayed sexuality, course books from the 1970s, the 1990s and 2013 were studied. Moreover, to get a deeper understanding of the subject, the curricula from each time period were also investigated. The method used was first and foremost a qualitative content analysis, but a quantitative approach was also used in some occasions. To get the result of this investigation four questions were asked: “In what way is sexuality portrayed in the curricula?”, “Where in the course books is sexuality discussed?”, “Which questions regarding sexuality are discussed?” and also “What types of sexualities are represented?”. The result of this essay demonstrates the fact that how sexuality is portrayed in Swedish course books for religious studies has changed since the 1970s. By discussing the results with the help of Ambjörnsson’s queer-theoretical analysis, it has become clear that Swedish education has gone from a rather heteronormative approach on portraying sexuality to a more including one. The subject of sexuality is more nuanced in the latest course book, and the subject has been given more space in the books. However, what has remained the same is the fact that only a few of the chapters discussing different religions also discuss sexuality. In the course books from previous time periods sexuality was almost exclusively discussed in chapters about Islam and Christianity, and even though sexuality is discussed in a different manner that is still the case.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-295860 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Lindell Thelin, Mette |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Religionshistoria |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds