Värdefull eller värdelös?

Om värdegrund och genus i läromedel i svenska

Abstract

Useful or Useless? Fundamental Values and Gender in Swedish as a School Subject

Lately there are numerous studies that emphasise the limits of gender and fundamental value questions in various teaching aids. In Swedish as a school subject, this kind of research is insufficient, which is noteworthy since several researches today regard Swedish as a subject that deals with issues such as democracy and dialogism in a decisive way. This article analyses three recently published text books aimed at literary history in Swedish as a school subject for upper secondary school with a focus on fundamental values. In the Swedish educational system, fundamental values is a central concept that illuminates matters connected to democracy, norms and values, and gender and equality are particularly significant issues. The study, which is both quantitative and qualitative, will be based on questions of intersectionality. Recurrent questions are thus how various authorships are presented based on gender, class, nationality and sexual preference. The results show that the analysed text books predominantly include a white, western, male discourse while discourses of women, non-European and national minorities clearly are excluded. Furthermore, men and women are valued differently. Stereotypical images of masculinity and femininity that are belitted, and sometimes even sexist, are constructed in the analysed course material. There is also an othering of non-European authors where non-European women are twice as marginalised. These evaluative points of departure, explicit and implicit, strengthen and manifest traditional gender roles and a heterosexual matrix which implacably go against the fundamental values of the Swedish educational system.