Reproduceras genus i religionsämnets läroböcker?
En diskursanalys över två valda läroböcker för religionskunskap på gymnasieskolan
Teaching materials are a constant matter of discussion as they represent the school curriculum and what the students are reading in the classroom. Within religious studies in upper secondary school, a new approach emerged since the new curriculum from 2011, which is to interpret religion in relation to gender. This study aimed to see which gender performances two selected teaching materials represented, in both their texts and images. This study was performed using both discourse analysis for the texts and content analysis of the images. The study showed that traditional gender performances appear both in the chapters that touched human identity and also ethics and morals, and also in the chapters that touched the world religions. However, the main performance in this study was about a male norm in both the material's text and its images as well as how women are presented as an exception to this norm. The result demonstrates the difficulty that authors of teaching materials are facing in explaining religions, which in the base is of a patriarchal structure. The study shows however that this patriarchal structure also is reflected in the sections on identity, culture, ethics and morality, and discusses whether this needs to be included in the teaching materials.