Browsing by Author "Clément, Rasmus"

This study aims to compare the two most recent national core curriculums (POPS 2004 and POPS 2014) of the Finnish school system with the help of critical discourse analysis. The goal of the comparison is to find ideological differences within the national core curriculums from a multicultural/intercultural point of view. The final purpose of this study is to then compare the same ideological differences in the content of geography textbooks. Previous studies have shown that school textbooks adapt always in some level to the contents of the national core curriculums. But on the other hand, some previous studies have shown that textbooks may posses the values and ideologies of the people who have ratified the textbook. Our study tries also to find an answer to this problematic question. The data of the research composed of two national core curriculums published in 2004 and 2014 respectively. The text was analysed using the critical discourse analysis from a multicultural point of view. The textbooks used in this study were made by the same Finnish publishing company (Sanoma Pro Oy) : Avara (which followed the national core curriculum of the year 2004) and Geoidi (of the year 2014). The textbooks were analysed from the themes created by the differences that were found in the national codes of education. The results found out that people tend to be the foundation of the concept of culture in both national core curriculums. The previous national core curriculum took culture as a static and stable concept, of which the borderlines were easily defined in accordance with the fundamentalist interpretation of culture. As for the current national core curriculum, it saw culture as a more unstable entity, being constantly in a process. There was no longer discussion of multiculturality, however it was replaced by the concept of cultural diversity. The textbook series that followed the previous national core curriculum (Avara) shared the values of creating borders between cultures and creating more prejudices. The current textbook series (Geoidi) saw culture being constantly in a process, like the current national core curriculum, even though it sometimes depicted a stable view of the culture.