Kunskap för framtiden? En analys av hur klimatförändringar beskrivs och förklaras i läroböcker

Sammanfattning: The Swedish school has a democratic mandate to prepare students for life in a society where many important decisions need to be made which require an ability to critically examine and evaluate different arguments. This applies particularly to climate change that will bring changes at all levels of society. Textbooks are important for the education provided in schools as they often define the topics and give structure to teaching. However climate change poses new demands on the school, because it is complex and spread across diverse subjects. The purpose of this paper was to study how climate change is explained and described in textbooks for the latter grades in the Swedish mandatory school in biology, chemistry, physics and geography. The study was conducted with a qualitative document analysis and the results are presented both in conceptual summaries of the arguments covered and in a qualitative review of the categories Cause, definition and responsibility, Consequences, Solutions and the theme of Certain or uncertain. The result shows that the ambition to explain climate change differs between authors and between the different subjects. Generally, climate change is described as an environmental issue and is included in an implicit way in the ambiguous concept of sustainable development, which complicates comprehension when it requires an ability to read between the lines to assimilate the message. Consequences of climate change are delivered in dramatic and menacing terms, whereas the readers – the students – primarily are assigned the role of consumer. There is a strong focus on emission reduction in the texts, while issues related to adaptation are rare and it´s not clear who is responsible for them. This intensifies the impression that available tools to help manage climate change and its consequences are few in the reader’s proximity.