Konfession eller ej? : En jämförande studie mellan läroböcker från Finland och Sverige

The aim of this essay is to study the contents of two upper secondary school textbooks in religious studies and more specifically, to study the representation of the books among world religions. The first of the textbooks is Swedish. It has been written out of a non-confessional context. The second book is Finnish and it has its foundation on a religious confessional context. To do this the following questions were answered: Are the contents of the textbooks affected by their confession or non-confession? Are different religions presented in different ways in the two textbooks? What are the similarities between the two textbooks? How much space in the textbooks are each religion given, and are they equally divided? How much of the religions ethics are being presented? Are any of the religions compared to Christianity in order to facilitate the student’s understanding? The method applied while commencing this study was content analysis. The results showed greater differences within each textbook, rather than the two compared to each other. Both textbooks showed signs of confessional influence