Ges plats för genusmedvetenhet i religionskunskapen? : En kvalitativ granskning av läromedel och intervjuer gällande undervisning för gymnasiet

Sammanfattning: This essay examines gender awareness in teaching materials for the Swedish upper secondary school’s religious education. The focus is on investigating a source material consisting of three different textbooks in religious education, and three teacher interviews. This source material thus forms the basis of the qualitative review completed in this essay. The purpose of this study is to use teaching material analysis and teacher interviews to conduct a gender theoretical discussion of religious education in upper secondary school into the field of textbook work. To do this, I use a gender theoretical point of view where the textbooks are examined in relation to Edwertz and Lundströms ”Gender staircase”. This means that the text content is placed in the staircase depending on how gender aware the content is. The research questions that are aimed to be answered refer to the representation of gender in text and images in the textbooks, how the textbooks can be interpreted on the basis of the ”Gender staircase”, how teachers work with gender awareness in the education situations, and what didactic assessments that can be made of the students’ own work with the textbooks. Previous research on teaching materials used in religious education show that gender aspects are included in most textbooks, but in isolated sections and not wholly integrated in the text. Research also shows that texts are usually neutral, but men tend to be over-represented and descriptive text is male. Research also shows that texts are usually neutral, but men are overrepresented and the human tend to be described as male. Previous teaching materials research focusing on religious education shows a picture of Islam as a violent religion that advocates women’s oppression. But research has also shown that newer textbooks have been developed and now provide a multifaceted picture of Islam. The results of this essay conclude that all the books analysed addressed gender in some way, and  that there is some overrepresentation of men and boys in text and image. The result also shows that all textbooks are placed on step (0) gender neutral, but that they also show tendencies for both lower and higher steps. Furthermore, the teacher interviews shows that teachers like to work spontaneously with questions about gender, but that they also use special tasks as a way to integrate gender. Finally, teachers note that girls raise issues of gender on their own to a greater extent than boys, but teachers may also often lead students to such reflections. All teachers agree that the textbook content unknowingly affects students regarding the image of the woman as a significant religious being.