Är ekologisk hållbarhet barnets ansvar? : En diskursanalys av ekologisk hållbarhet i barnböcker för förskoleåldern.

Sammanfattning: Ecological sustainability is a complex concept. What constitutes ecological sustainability as well as what it means to different people and organizations varies. This elusive understanding of the phenomenon was the motivation for this study. What is portrayed as ecological sustainability in children’s books? And how does this understanding affect the possibilities for the intended readers, namely the children? With this as background, the study aims to analyze what ecological sustainability is in children’s books, as well as how this discourse enables and disables different actions and positions from the children reading them. This was done using a discourse analysis inspired by the theories of Foucault, with a thematic analysis as the method for processing and analyzing the data. Data consisted of six children’s books with a theme of ecological sustainability aimed at children ages three to six. The study shows that ecological sustainability is mostly portrayed as individual actions, like recycling and picking up garbage. This very limited discourse makes it impossible for children to talk about societal and political aspects of ecological sustainability, as well as putting a lot of pressure on the reader with depictions of ecological sustainability as the individual’s responsibility. In addition to this, children were also positioned in the books as the only subject capable of change and action. The results show that ECE-teachers need to have a critical approach to the books they read, as they were shown to limit actions more than enabling them by creating and reproducing a discourse of ecological sustainability as something which is up to children to solve.