Förberedelse för ett aktivt medborgarskap : En läroboksstudie av politiska system på nationell- och europeisk nivå

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study is to examine how textbooks in civic education prepares students to become active citizens. In this study six textbooks, either written for the theoretical track or the vocational track in upper secondary school, were examined using a qualitative text analysis. The aim of this study is to compare in which way the political system at the national and European level is described, how the books describe the democratic citizen, and lastly if there is any difference between the books written for the different tracks. To examine in which way the political systems are described the content were analyzed using the dimensions: polity, policy and politics. The second part of the theoretical framework consisted of three models of democracy, which were used to analyze how the books describe the democratic citizen. Results showed that the political systems were not described in the same way. The textbooks had more content about the Swedish national system in all of the content categories. However, no clear description of the democratic citizen was identified. Most of the content in the textbooks described the citizen as a person which votes in the elections or uses other actions to influences the politicians, but the textbooks also trained the students to take part in political discussions. Results also showed that the books written for the theoretical track overall had more political content and longer passages. Lastly they had more advanced questions for the students.