This study focuses on an analysis of textbooks in religious studies for the upper secondary school in Sweden. In the Swedish curriculum Christianity has a special importance even though school should be non-confessional in Sweden. Since Sweden today does not have a central authority that reviews textbooks, it is instead up to the individual schools to analyze and review their teaching materials and the authors of textbooks need to base their textbooks on their own interpretation of the curriculum. The study aims to explain whether we can find a typical Swedish textbook discourse and if so how it relates to the curriculum's wording about Christianity’s special importance. Furthermore, what potential impact the author’s interpretation of this special importance could have on the equivalence in Swedish religious studies in upper secondary school and how it potentially could lead to a discourse of Christian exceptionalism. The analysis of the textbooks is based on Fairclough's critical discourse analysis both as a theory and as a method of analysis. The findings indicate that there is a Swedish textbook discourse that values western traditions over eastern traditions of Christianity and often equates Protestantism with the Church of Sweden.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-43088 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Flodfält, Axel |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Malmö högskola, Institutionen för samhälle, kultur och identitet (SKI) |
| 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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