Läromedel i Samhällskunskap - En textanalys ur ett mångkulturellt samt interkulturellt perspektiv

Sammanfattning: This survey is a text analysis of 4 teaching books during a ten years period in Social studies from a multicultural and intercultural perspective. Taking as a starting point that society and the school in today’s Sweden are multicultural and in need of more intercultural teaching I explore teaching books in social science to se how they relate to Sweden as a multicultural society and their way of relating to intercultural teachings and compare them. The questions asked are: How do the different books describe the multicultural society in Sweden? What kind of intercultural tools are found in the books? And are there any similarities or differences among these books? The theories used as a starting point are reformulated by the author after theories of Von Wright and Lahdenperä to fit in to the context of a text analysis of teaching books and the method used is a content analysis with its purpose of describing how the books are constructed. I have found that two older books from ten years ago are not describing Sweden as a multicultural society and are not including people with different origin as a natural part of the society. I have also found that there are not much intercultural tools used for increasing the reader’s intercultural understanding. In two older books from 1994 there is a tendency to stereotype people with different origins in and to not describe them as participant members of society. The newer books from 2004 and 2005 are more describing Sweden as a multicultural society both directly and indirectly and they are including people with different origins to be a participant part of the society. It is also reflected that there is always a risk for stereotyping different groups in society by discussing problems but that there are different ways considered to avoid that. The books from today are both using more intercultural tools to increase the reader’s intercultural understanding in different ways.