The Uses of History in Textbooks : An investigation into how the use of history is presented in history textbooks.

The purpose of our degree project is to create an understanding of how three history textbooks and the textbook publishers make use of the use of history. The questions that we have started from are: How is the use of history presented in the textbooks? Is the depiction of history use the same between the books? When we were investigating we used the method called text analysis, and we analyzed the textbooks SOL NOVA HISTORIA 9, Utkik historia 7-9 and Fundament historia 7-9. When we have analyzed we have used books on theory by professor of History Klas-Göran Karlsson and professor of social sciences didactics Kenneth Nordgren. The conclusion of our degree project is that the history textbooks seem to have traces of both our theorists but Klas-Göran Karlsson's theory is the one that has more room in comparison to Nordgren. The reason is because the history books' description of different ways of using history is often closer to Karlsson's typology than to Nordgren´s. We can also see this because one of the books has used one of Karlsson's typologies, the moral use of history. An example of a similarity that we have seen between the books is that the use of history is a conscious act that people or groups do in order to achieve their purpose. Another similarity is that the books use similar examples when it comes to using history. An example with a similar theme between the textbooks are on the usage of ancient history such as Alexander the Great and how the use of history has an impact on Macedonian and Greek identity today. An example of a difference between the books, is that the use of history is given different amounts of space. Another example of a difference that we have seen between the books is that one of them has mentioned in its description of the use of history that history can also be used unconsciously. This is interesting because our theorists have described the use of history as a conscious act