The content of teaching materials considerably affects pupils? attitudes and worldview. This paper is an analysis of textbooks used in 7th through 9th grade of the Swedish School system in Swedish as a Second Language (SSL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The purpose of this paper is to look at which minority groups, the five official national minorities as well as other minorities, are included and portrayed in the textbook series Tre gånger svenska and Wings Mini as well as to see if there is any bias in their portrayal. The seven types of bias investigated; invisibility, stereotyping and generalizations, unreality, imbalance and selectivity, fragmentation and isolation, linguistic bias and cosmetic bias are an adaption of the framework to detect bias in curriculum materials presented by Sadker and Zittleman (2002/2003).

Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka om, och i så fall hur, skolböckerna i årskurs åtta på högstadiet befäster traditionella genussystem som finns inom vårt samhälle och kultur, eller om det finns möjlighet för eleverna att förhålla sig öppna för andra synsätt. Vi har utgått från ett socialkonstruktivistiskt förhållningssätt. Det analysverktyg som vi har använt är Norman Faircloughs tredimensionella modell för kritisk diskursanalys samt semiotisk bildanalys. Vårt urval av undersökningsmaterial har skett genom att först välja ut fyra skolböcker i olika ämnen från en årskurs åttas läromedel. Sedan smalnade vi av undersökningen ytterligare genom att välja ut ett kapitel ur varje skolbok för närmare analys.

AbstractThe genetic diversity in cultural plants is considered to be threatened due to global climate change and antropogenic influence. Unknowing of future conditions for cultivation, gene banks all over the world are now trying to build up costly safety nets of species and varieties that may become highly valuable owing to their specific traits and genetic heredity. Hence, in 2002 there was a national inventory, aimed at the Swedish public, asking for seeds believed to be lost. Among the resulting collected seeds were some accessions of garden bean, Phaseolus vulgaris. The objective of this particular study was to assemble a collection of unique varieties and discard possible duplicates.