Sekularisering - en definitionsfråga? : En kvalitativ innehållsanalys av hur läromedel framställer sekularisering

Sammanfattning: Today Sweden is one of the most secularized countries in the world and almost nowhere do so few believe that traditional religion plays a role in their lives. The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze how secularization is portrayed in nine selected textbooks intended for middle school education and also to analyze how this result can be understood from two perspectives: secularization and modernization.  To clarify this purpose through a specific inquiry, two research questions have been formulated: How is secularization presented in the different textbooks? and How can the production of educational materials be understood in terms of secularization and modernization?. The aim is also to achieve this by using pre-selected analytical questions that will help answer the research question along with the selected excerpts in the material. The theory used in this study consists of the definitions of secularization and modernization presented and discussed in Bruce (2002, 2011) and Davie (2013). Bruce (2002, 2011) discusses the role of modernization in the decline of religion in society and the emergence of the secular society, where rationality, science, and technology became increasingly important. The discussion also assumes that the rise of secularization is a development of modernization. Davie (2013) initially discusses how modernization and the separation of church and state created a society that no longer relied on religious thinking but instead on empirical and ethical approaches.  Since the essay aims to study how textbooks present a concept, a content analysis of qualitative significance has been conducted to select and analyze what the author intends to convey through their portrayal of secularization. To structure the presented material, a coding process has been conducted to identify the context in which secularization is portrayed and presented in the different textbooks. The coding categories are as follows: "Secularization as the main part of the context," "Secularization as a part alternatively labeled in the context," and "Secularization not presented." Based on these codes, a thematization of the material has been carried out to use the analytical questions that have been employed to answer the research question. The themes are as follows: 'secularization,' 'modernization,' 'micro-level,' and 'macro-level.' The conclusions that this study has been able to identify and establish are that secularization can be portrayed and presented in several different ways. It is up to the author to focus on which perspective, starting point, or societal level secularization should be used.