Browsing by Subject "koulutieto"

The aim of the study was to examine school textbooks in order to construct their specific environmental discourse, reflecting political environmental discourses identified in larger society. Special attention was paid to the concept of sustainable development, which has been seen essential in environmental education and curricula, but often criticized of it's lack of meaning. Textbooks are seen as representative examples of school knowledge, and especially as representatives of "official knowledge". A textbook is a selective construction of all knowledge available in society, and the process of selection is seen as ideological. Materials examined were 5th and 6th grade school textbooks of biology and geography. Critical discourse analysis was used as a methodological approach, with a view to constructing meaning from the contexts of different levels. Contextualization was used as a tool to analyze both the immediate textbook context of expressions concerning human-nature -relationship (e.g. pictures; articulation of social actors, metaphors and other meaningful vocabulary), but also to make connections with the wider socio-political context absent from texts. As a conclusion it can be seen that the environmental discourse of textbooks is constructed roughly from two contradictory discourses. On the one hand, natural environment is seen as a background for neutral-represented social action and the relationship towards nature is utilitarian one. One the other hand, nature is seen as "pure", in need of conservation, and the relationship towards it can be seen as romantic. In this sense, textbooks reflect both neutral problem-solving -discourses and the romantic green discourse. The discourse of the textbooks is named "the discourse of hope": first, urgency in the name of global ecological limits is not articulated, and second, willingness to prevent environmental degration is represented to be quite unproblematic. The latter can be seen in expressions valuing nature in positive terms, representing conservation as harmonious and unpolitical "facts" and constructing the belief in individual environmental-friendly action.