Browsing by Author "Tainiola, Sonja"

My research concerns the manifestation of sexual diversity in basic education textbooks. In general, our attitudes towards sexual diversity have slowly changed. In our society these changes have also affected legislation. For example, same-sex marriages are now recognized by law.. Previous research has established that heteronormativity dominates basic education textbooks and teaching. The aim of this research is to examine if sexual diversity appears in health education textbooks. If it does appear, how is sexual diversity described. My presumption was that heteronormativity still dominates health and sex education. Due to subjective nature of discourse analysis, the possible bias caused by this presumption has to be taken into account when reading the findings of my research. My research material was basic education textbooks. In primary school, health education is part of subject called ympäristöoppi. I analyzed parts 1-6 of this subject’s textbook called Tutkimusmatka. In junior high school health education is its own subject and the textbook is called Voimaa. My research method was discourse analysis. There was four discourses to be found in my study. These discourses were the missing discourse of sexuality, the biological discourse of sexuality, the heteronormative discourse of sexuality and discourse, which was normalising sexual diversity. In primary school textbooks there was not much of talk about sexual diversity, because the discourse of sexuality was missing altogether. Biological discourse of sexuality was dominating all textbooks. In junior high school textbooks there was talk about sexual diversity, but only in one chapter. Even though there was attempt to normalise sexual diversity, heteronormativity dominated the talk about sexual diversity. Heteronormativity seems to be still dominating health education textbooks.