Problemet religion : – En innehållsanalys av läroböckers framställning av religion i ämnet samhällskunskap för gymnasieskolan

The aim of this essay was to investigate how religious topics and events are presented in five coursebooks in social studies. To do this the following questions were answered: In which context do discussions about religion take place? Are religions brought up in different contexts? To which extent do discussions about religion occur? The method consisted of a both quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The results of this essay showed that discussion regarding religion in social studies coursebooks mainly focuses on wars, conflicts, terrorism and to some degree the human rights. Islam was the religion that occurred most frequently in the coursebooks. Furthermore, the effects of the results on Swedish students’ understanding of religion were discussed with the help of Fairclough’s theory on critical discourse analysis. One of the most important conclusions was that the coursebooks give the impression that religion in general and Islam in particular is a threat against democracy