Vad är viktigt?
Läroboken i biologi som förmedlare av kunskapsideal kring innehåll och mening
Textbook analysisBiologyScience educationMultimodal analysisFunctional grammarCritical thinkingLäroboksanalysBiologiMultimodal textanalysFunktionell grammatikSpråkhandlingarKunskapsidealKällkritiskt förhållningssätt
The aim for this paper has been to examine three textbooks designed for science education in upper secondary school in order to determine whether they convey any specific attitudes regarding what is considered to be ideal knowledge within the field of biology. The main focus has been to investigate if different types of design strategies have been used to emphasize certain values or attitudes and if this proves to be the case, how is this achieved specifically? For this purpose I have conducted several different qualitative linguistic analyses of the textbooks. The theoretical framework for the analyses lies within the main field of critical linguistics and more specifically in the context of systemic functional linguistics. The two main language models I have chosen to use for my investigations are functional grammar and multimodal text analysis. My results imply amongst other things that by conducting an overall assessment of the headlines in the textbooks a fair assessment can be made of which overall attitudes the books convey. Another founding that has proven to be of relevance is the multimodal analysis of the introductory chapter within each textbook. This chapter conveys more than anything else the true attitudes the authors have, not only towards the school subject itself but also, to the reader. Furthermore, the overall language use in the introduction significantly reveals the textbooks approach and usability as an educational tool.