Picture books are a big part of young children’s life and something that is daily used in most preschools in Sweden. Through books children can learn about the world and how to handle different situations they will meet in their lives. However, books may not always show a realistic representation of the world they live in, for example regarding how people with disability are portrayed. This study aims to examine how people with disabilities are portrayed in books for preschool children in Sweden. The study examines which disabilities are present in the books, which role the character has and how the storyline is affected by the disability. By reading books that have characters with disabilities, earlier studies show that children can get a better understanding of disabilities in order to become more accepting in regard to people with disabilities. By using a content analysis for a quantitative study, the text and pictures in the 29 books have been studied in regard to the studies purpose. The result of the analysis of the text and pictures has then been examined from Claes Nilholm dilemma perspective. The study shows that the type of disability affects the way the characters are portrayed and the space they get in the storyline. The type of disability also hugely affects the storyline and if the same book could have been written without the disability. For example, books with characters with a neurological disability could not have been written without the disability in question while most books with a character with an orthopedic disability could have. With this study we also show that there is a need for different types of books that include characters with disabilities so that children can get a better understanding. Books that explain the disability are needed as well as books where the character happens to have a disability.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-46654 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Pering, Hanna, Alfredsson, Johanna |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för lärande och samhälle (LS) |
| 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 |
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