Diversities and Interculturality in Textbooks : Finland as an Example [1 ed.] 9781443876698, 9781443872621

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Diversities and Interculturality in Textbooks

From the Series Post-intercultural Communication and Education

Series editor: Fred Dervin, University of Helsinki, Finland The quality of the work published in this series is double-blind reviewed by external referees appointed by the editorship.

Diversities and Interculturality in Textbooks Finland as an Example Edited by

Kaisa Hahl, Pia-Maria Niemi, Rita Johnson Longfor and Fred Dervin

Diversities and Interculturality in Textbooks: Finland as an Example Edited by Kaisa Hahl, Pia-Maria Niemi, Rita Johnson Longfor and Fred Dervin This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Kaisa Hahl, Pia-Maria Niemi, Rita Johnson Longfor, Fred Dervin and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7262-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7262-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword One ............................................................................................ vii Jari Lavonen Foreword Two ............................................................................................ ix Karen Risager Foreword Three ........................................................................................ xiii Adrian Holliday Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Fred Dervin, Kaisa Hahl, Pia-Maria Niemi and Rita Johnson Longfor Chapter One ............................................................................................... 17 The Alphabet Gone Wrong? Diversities in Three Finnish ABC Books Heini Paavola and Fred Dervin Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 37 How is the Other Produced in Two Finnish ABC (E-)Books —An Intertextual Reading Tuija Itkonen and Martina Paatela-Nieminen Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 61 Performing Gender and Agency in Home Economics Textbook Images Sonja Anttila, Jouni Leskinen, Hanna Posti-Ahokas and Hille Janhonen-Abruquah Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 85 Religion, Culture, and Ideology: Analysing Cultural Discourses in Finnish Religion Textbook Exercises Monika Schatz and Pia-Maria Niemi Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 107 Democracy and Human Rights: A Critical Look at the Concept of Western Values in Finnish School Textbooks Pia Mikander

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Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 125 Holocaust Education: An Alternative Approach to Antiracism Education? A Study of a Holocaust Textbook Used in 8th Grade in an International School in Finland Aminkeng A. Alemanji, Rita Johnson Longfor and Edda Óskarsdóttir Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 149 “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself (…)”: Representing Intercultural Encounters in Two Finnish History Textbooks Fred Dervin, Kaisa Hahl, Anu Härkönen and Heidi Layne Commentary ............................................................................................ 175 Julie S. Byrd Clark Contributors ............................................................................................. 183



FOREWORD ONE JARI LAVONEN1

A textbook plays a vital role in teaching and learning. According to the latest national level monitoring in Science, altogether 79% of the teachers indicated that they use a science textbook in every lesson or almost every lesson (Kärnä, Hakonen, & Kuusela, 2012). Therefore, research on textbooks is an important area of educational research and could have several important implications to teaching and learning and, moreover, to more general topics in education, like citizenship and multicultural education. I was honoured to have the opportunity to read the manuscript of this book. I was thinking about various perspectives while reading. I have been working as a teacher educator and researcher in educational sciences during the last 25 years. There were several interesting research findings for me, and probably for other teacher educators as well, in the manuscript. In my own textbook related research I have been analysing how the textbooks introduce science concepts through pictorial and textual information and through different kinds of representations. Furthermore, I have been interested in the contexts which are used to introduce the concepts. However, I have had a narrow view to contexts and situations used in textbooks. Through the research papers, this book introduced to me several new perspectives in textbook research—such as views related to social class, gender, sexuality, language, race and religion. The book opened new windows to me as a textbook author. I have participated in several author teams during the last 30 years and written about 160 school textbooks, teacher guides and university level textbooks. In the author teams, we have typically discussed how the book introduces the concepts and how the book genre fits the genre of the teachers. The outcomes of the research papers in this book introduce several new viewpoints—like the aspects related to contexts, gender and race—all

 1

Professor and Director of the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki (Finland).

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important for textbook authors to take into account while writing textbooks. I warmly recommend this book to school teachers, textbook authors, researchers in educational sciences and teacher educators.

Reference Kärnä, P., Hakonen, R., & Kuusela, J. (2012). Luonnontieteiden osaaminen perusopetuksen 9. luokalla 2011. Koulutuksen seurantaraportit 2012:2. Helsinki: Opetushallitus.



FOREWORD TWO KAREN RISAGER1

Diversities and Interculturality in Textbooks: Finland as an Example is an excellent illustration of how a group of scholars, gathered in a department of teacher education and drawing on a range of different school subjects, can produce a forward-looking collection of articles addressing one of the most pressing issues of today’s world: The role of education in promoting—or hampering—international and intercultural understanding. The central concept in the book is diversities in the plural: changing constellations of groups and/or individuals of different social class, gender, sexuality, language, race, religion etc. The book asks how visible they are in textbooks and whether we hear their voices. One of the most important aspects treated in the book is representations of the Other, the West, the intercultural encounter. In doing so, the book redefines and expands a field that has interested teachers, educationalists and philosophers for many years worldwide: How should we deal with other nations and our own nation in textbooks in schools? Bertrand Russell, the famous British philosopher and peace activist, wrote these words a hundred years ago, in 1916, during World War I: Every state wishes to promote national pride, and is conscious that this cannot be done by unbiased history. The defenceless children are taught by distortions and suppressions and suggestions. The false ideas as to the history of the world which are taught in the various countries are of a kind which encourages strife and serves to keep alive bigoted nationalism. If good relations between states were desired, one of the first steps ought to be to submit all teaching of history to an international commission, which should produce neutral textbooks free from the patriotic bias which is now demanded everywhere. (Clammer, 1985, p. 5)

Of course, today we would emphasise other aspects of the role of textbooks in macro-level conflicts. The world situation has greatly changed since 1916, although the legacy of especially Western colonialism in most regions of the world is still very much alive. Political and cultural

 1

Professor Emerita, Roskilde University (Denmark).

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discourses have greatly changed as well. In the contemporary world, and in the postmodern vein that is characteristic of studies of diversities and interculturality, we would emphasise that the nation is not the only cultural parameter to be examined; we have to include a wider range of intersecting parameters such as ethnicity, race, gender, religion, etc. We would emphasise that not only history, but all school subjects contribute to students’ view of society and the world. And we would maintain that a textbook can never be neutral, as there will always be a perspective (or different perspectives) from which the subject matter is seen. Finally the idea of an international commission for neutral textbook production would be unthinkable. We would not consider granting any transnational or global organisation that kind of authority today. Still, it is interesting to see how much work has been carried out by international bodies since WWI in order to organise and discuss textbook revision and to suggest how textbooks in history and other subjects can help develop international understanding and dialogue, and particularly avoid national stereotyping. In the years immediately following WWI a number of organisations called for revision of textbooks (Crammer, 1985, p. 6ff), among them the National Union of Public School Teachers in France and the Colonies, the German Association of Radical School Reformers, the Seventh Congress of the German Pacifists, the Japanese Association of Teachers, the Workers’ Association of Britain and the Netherlands Teachers’ Association. Many textbook surveys and inquiries were carried out. In 1922 the International Committee for Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC) was formed as a part of the League of Nations, and among its achievements was the Casares Resolution, which provided that if a National Committee found an objectionable statement in a foreign textbook, it should notify its counterpart in the other country, pointing out suggested changes. This work resulted in a Declaration on the Teaching of History that was officially adopted by the League of Nations and signed by a number of countries, including Finland (but none of the Great Powers signed) (Ibid., p. 11). Beside this multilateral work, bilateral projects were also set up, not least a collaboration between teachers in Germany and France. Their work on an agreement concerning history textbooks on Alsace-Lorraine was postponed, however, and later stopped in the years 1936–37. Other collaborative projects that should be mentioned, are those initiated by the Norden Associations (Foreningerne Norden). After WWII, UNESCO was created in 1946 as a continuation of the ICIC. Among its first achievements in the area of textbook research is the Model Plan from 1949 (Crammer, 1985, p. 30), which sets out six principles for

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textbook elaboration: accuracy, fairness, worth, comprehensiveness and balance, world-mindedness, and international cooperation. A large number of multilateral and bilateral projects on textbooks in history, geography and social studies have been carried out since then, many of them organised by the International Textbook Institute in Brunswick (Georg-Eckert-Institut für internationale Schulbuchforschung, Braunschweig), an important textbook research centre and library related to UNESCO and the Council of Europe. Another significant piece of work on behalf of UNESCO is an international project undertaken by the Finnish Commission in 1983 focusing on issues in relation to the cold war (Ibid., p. 43). Since the 1980s UNESCO has taken up the challenges of the cultural turn (Pingel, 2010). The educational focus is no longer only on real and potential conflicts between states (nations), but also on intra-state issues, and more generally problems and potentials related to culturally diverse societies. The focus is on learning how to live together. As regards to textbook research and revision, UNESCO calls for a multi-perspectival methodology, including minority perspectives. UNESCO is engaged in textbook research because it has a role in international relations as regards to initiatives for reconstruction and reconciliation. Scholarly research in universities does not have to have this aim; it can have other agendas such as critical analysis and theoretical, methodological and philosophical development. This book on Diversities and Interculturality in Textbooks is an innovative piece of scholarly work that opens up discussions across different subjects. Some of these subjects may not have been studied before from a textbook analysis perspective. The subjects treated in the book are mother tongue education (ABC books in Finnish as the majority mother tongue), home economics, religious education, geography, history, social studies, and Holocaust education (at an international school). The collaborative work touches on common problematics: the representation of diversities and interculturality in textbooks. However, otherwise the methodological and theoretical references are diverse: quantitative and qualitative studies, various discourse studies, studies of images, rhizomatic reading, intertextual method, grammar-of-culture approach to narrative analysis, gender performativity, otherness, (post)colonialism and the concept of the West, intercultural encounters, antiracism education. As the editors and authors rightly emphasise in the Introduction, it is important that there is a constant dialogue between publishing companies, editors, practitioners and researchers. Innovation on the textbook market requires that novel ideas concerning for example learning about diversities and interculturality can circulate in the whole production process, through

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to practice in the learning space, and ultimately to the feedback from students and others involved. Does the textbook promote or hamper international and intercultural understanding?

References Clammer, D. G. (1985). Textbook Research: An Internationalist Perspective. Norwich, UK: University of East Anglia, School of Education. Pingel, F. (2010). UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision. Paris, France: UNESCO.



FOREWORD THREE CULTURE IN TEXTBOOKS ADRIAN HOLLIDAY1

This book quite rightly places textbooks at the centre of intercultural education and the wide range of issues that surround it. These issues become clear with the break from the modernist, positivist view that culture is a solid, physical, geographical place which can be objectively characterised by exclusive values and behaviours. In the postmodern view culture is by contrast socially and ideologically constructed and the modernist positivist picture is revealed to be the basis of a naïve Self and Other politics. In this politics, whenever ‘culture’ is invoked there is a hidden sense of opposition to other ‘cultures’ as superior or inferior. It is thus increasingly argued that talking and making claims about culture is a ‘nice’ way of insinuating race—that there is a neo-racism which hides beneath everyday talk of culture. I am not alone, through my grammar of culture (Holliday, 2013), in arguing for how this neo-racist implication connects in complex ways to almost all aspects of how we construct and engage with culture. (I am of course delighted to see the grammar being used so well in Schatz & Niemi’s chapter.) This point is made by a number of the chapters; and it is good to see a book which both recognises and spells out in detail the ideological politics of culture. This book also makes it clear that it is not just cultural comparison which is problematic. The textbooks that are looked at are all within state education. As such they by default serve the education system, which is partly there to socialise young people into the norms of the society, sometimes, indeed, explicitly teaching its ‘civilisation’. In this role, textbooks might therefore be expected to work to establish histories and perceptions of Self and Other which position the society favourably on a world scene. We must all have experienced this nationalistic socialisation first hand. It is very clear to me, now, after considerable thinking and research about

 1

Professor, Canterbury Christ Church University (UK).

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the issue, that throughout my education I was taught that my ancestors were the Greeks, then the Romans, and that the age-old enemy was the despotic East, then the despotic Catholicism of the not-too-distant South. In this history, somehow, the clever, fair, game-playing, problem-solving, ingenious, plucky, inventive, thrifty, always honest Protestant ethic, which was strongly Self, started with the Greeks in their defeat of the Persian Empire and their mythical theft of the Golden Fleece from ‘corrupt’ Colchis. Even the myths of ancient Greece were made to resonate so strongly with who I was. It was clear to me as a child that the same spirit which few brave Spitfires against Nazism could also educate the world. And there I was, at 23, doing just that as a British Council English teacher in Iran. All of this I can now trace straight back in my mind to reading aloud Greek myths around in class, the importance of ‘mental arithmetic’, and a focus on the corruption of Pharisees and Philistines in Bible stories. This book looks at how Finnish school textbooks in a range of subjects operate in just this sort of way, not only through explicit content which compares cultures, but also through more interpretable associations and imagery which perpetuate the ideologies and discourses of nationhood. My recollections above are from the 1950s and 1960s when I knew of little attention to minority communities and globalisation. In many ways this process of socialisation was inevitable because it was largely about the internalisation of the written and visual images which surrounded me. While we had an empire which spread across the world, to a schoolchild in the north of England it was an exotic domain which resided largely in the adventure books I read outside school. On the other hand, no-one, in school or out, would have dreamt of offering an alternative image of the Colchians, Persians and Philistines, or of representing the vast and distant populations of empire as intelligent problem-solving people just like me, instead of as exotic imaginaries. There was no justification for cultural Othering then. But in a modern world, where people are moving with greater frequency and speed than ever before, both physically and electronically, the impact and dangers of such Othering are instant. The need to act against it is urgent. A Syrian friend, now in her 50s, told me recently how she had lived through the civil war in Lebanon, a series of Arab-Israeli wars, and the political conflicts that have constantly plagued where she lives. But she says that what particularly troubles her now, as her country is torn apart, is that it is no longer clear who the enemy is. In many ways the enemy for all of us is what prevents us from recognising each other as human beings with diversities that enrich rather than threaten. Diversities is thus significantly placed in the title of the

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book. Textbooks should no longer simply fulfil the function of presenting national narratives, discourses and ideologies. Neither should the aim merely be to help our children understand better a foreign Other. As it is clearly stated in Paavola and Dervin’s chapter, diversity is all around us and part of our everyday lives, and, indeed, is within all of us. Every opportunity must be made to bring this message home. To satisfy nationalist objectives, appreciating these diversities has implications for internal as well as international peace. Another purpose of textbooks is therefore to educate; and it is significant that this book does not stop at critiquing the images that other the ‘foreign’, but also goes some way to laying out what a better purpose should be. In some cases there is evaluation of how far some of these images can be used differently to increase the awareness of school pupils regarding cultural diversity and Othering. It is perhaps important to note that I did not myself become fully aware of the Othering impact of the narratives and images in my own education until much later in life after a long personal struggle with the issues. Part of this awareness has been due to becoming informed of the power and provenance of the images and narratives to which I had been exposed. It may well be, therefore, that not only pupils, but also textbook writers, the ministries that approve them, and certainly the teachers who teach them, need a lot of critical discourse awareness of the material they are working with. Nevertheless, this will never be enough, because none of us are fully aware of all the hidden meanings of the images and narratives that surround us. It is also important to note that it is not only the images of others that we need to be careful of, but also how we project ourselves—the Self which precipitates our definition of the Other. It becomes clear therefore that the school textbook is at the very core of a many-faceted set of issues and factors connected with the politics of cultural representation. Partly because of the location of Finland and its particular history, this takes in the complicated question of what is the West, the non-West, and the meanings which different parties bestow on these concepts. Another great strength of the book is the excellent literature reviews on what amounts to an extensive area of critical scholarship with regard to textbooks and the representations of culture, gender and race.

Reference Holliday, A. R. (2013). Understanding Intercultural Communication: Negotiating a Grammar of Culture. London, UK: Routledge.

 

INTRODUCTION FRED DERVIN, KAISA HAHL, PIA-MARIA NIEMI AND RITA JOHNSON LONGFOR

“We couldn’t do without it.” (Teacher) “It’s a very democratic media in that it can be used by anybody.” (Publisher) “It is trustworthy.” (Publisher) “Yes, this year would have been a complete catastrophe without a book.” (Teacher) (Excerpts from Katri Grenman, 2010)

These quotes, from the context covered in this volume, the Nordic country of Finland, underline the importance that textbooks play in education. Omnipresent and canonical, textbooks “provide expertise, are timesavers, and provide security for both teachers and students in outlining content, scope and sequence” (Eisner, 1987, p. 12). In addition to their subject-specific contents, textbooks can contribute to intercultural and global education. According to Kramsch (2013), “Textbooks are crucial instruments in the shaping of the future citizenry of a nation or of the global community to which these citizens will belong” (p. 24). Yet the way this is done can be problematic as textbooks are sometimes perceived to be ‘tyrannical’ (they can exercise too much power in a classroom), biased and controversial (Jobrack, 2012; Lowen, 2009). The risk of producing or reproducing stereotypes and prejudices about the self and other is real and needs to be addressed when researching/talking about textbooks. Looking beyond the surface level it quickly becomes obvious that textbooks are far from neutral. The way they are written, published and used usually derives from “the official knowledge a society wants its children to acquire” to prepare for the life to come (Williams, 2012, p. 1119). As Fleming (1989–1990) pointed out over two decades ago, besides providing information and knowledge, textbooks can promote “ethical

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Introduction

models” and “patriotism” (p. 7). The narratives, facts, people, events but also rules, norms and behaviours represented in textbooks often reflect the values and ideologies promoted by the nation-state. As states define the curricula and make decisions concerning schooling—in some countries the production of textbooks is monitored—they remain the main actors of education in our postmodern societies (Pingel, 2010) and remain extremely relevant objects of research. In addition to political agendas, economic aspects play an important role in textbook production. While financial profit may not be the first or only reason for creating a textbook from the authors’ perspective, most of the times publication processes are restricted by several financial interests. For the publisher a textbook is an investment, and the outcome needs to be a product that sells. A team of authors usually works with an editor appointed by the publishing company. Although the authors have the main responsibility for creating the content by writing the texts, designing exercises, and choosing photos for illustration, the company editor has the power to decide on what gets printed or not. The authors can thus never be sure of what will make it to the final version of the textbook. In order to make sure that the book is sellable it is often important that the book is not too controversial or ‘different.’ One of the editors of this volume, Fred Dervin, has published several textbooks and he has often witnessed ‘censorship’ during the editorial meetings. The editors have justified their viewpoints by referring to what the “teachers wanted” or to the fact that the students “are not interested in that” or “would not understand.” Thus the way of seeing schools, other educational institutions and private people not only as users of the textbooks, but also or even primarily as consumers who usually have to pay to gain access to the book, is an essential part of textbook publishing.

Purpose Most scholars from the field of textbook studies suggest that textbooks should reflect current societal and political changes. Instead of recognizing diversity as a character mainly applicable to immigrants, most societies have started to openly recognize a multitude of diversities that have previously been ‘hidden’ or marginalized. Groups and/or individuals of different social class, gender, sexuality, language, race, religion, etc. are increasingly visible for example in the media. However, how visible are they in textbooks? If they are visible at all, how are “they”/“diversities” represented? Can one hear their voices? What are they made to do/not to? What kinds of tools do the textbooks give to students to reflect on and

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encounter diversities and similarities in different contexts? The idea of diversities is sometimes perceived as a sensitive subject in Finland—like in most countries—and can lead to strong ideologies and a lack of selfreflexivity and criticality. It is thus a central educational issue that will also be of interest for readers outside Finland. The purpose of this collected volume is to propose multidisciplinary research into textbooks, taking the Finnish context as an example. In a country like Finland with a population of 5 million people—a country that continues to be constructed as ‘homogeneous’ in spite of increased immigration (Dervin, 2013a)—what place do diversities occupy in textbooks? This book sets out to explore this important question. In general very little is known of the “social and political lessons of school textbooks” that are taught and acquired (William, 2012, p. 1120). In fact these are not always included in teaching and learning or they are (re)interpreted: “rarely is textbook content simply accepted, absorbed, and then regurgitated by learners” (Ibid.). This volume is of interest for students in educational sciences, preservice teachers and in-service teachers of various school subjects, teacher educators and novice researchers in the areas of subject didactics, multicultural/intercultural education, educational leadership, curriculum and policy. The authors examine how textbooks are written, constructed and arranged, revealing hidden agendas and ideologies. They base their studies on one or more of the aspects of curricular biases proposed by Sadker and Sadker (1982): invisibility (who is represented, who is not?), stereotyping, imbalance and selectivity (an issue is interpreted in one way only), unreality (e.g. illusionary depiction of a place), fragmentation (inserts separating the discussion from the main narrative in a textbook), linguistic bias (political in/correctness), and cosmetic bias (illusions of equity in how people are represented).

Why Finland? Finnish students’ success in international comparisons of student assessments (such as the PISA) in the last decade has been celebrated at the national level and remained a topic of interest internationally. Finnish students’ performance has been among the best in all the domains in each PISA cycle, albeit on the decline in the latest one (Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, 2013). According to Niemi, Toom, and Kallioniemi (2011), there is no single explanation for the success. Rather, the successful performance of Finnish students seems to be attributable to a web of interrelated factors having to do with a comprehensive pedagogy,

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students’ own interest and leisure activities, the structure of the education system, teacher education, school practices and the ‘Finnish culture’ (Ibid., p. 3). Many of the “pedagogical tourists” who have ventured into Finland to witness its ‘miraculous education’ (Dervin, 2013b; Niemi et al., 2011) are often surprised by the following fact concerning textbooks shared by a Finnish publisher: “When I have talked with colleagues from other countries, they have been wondering about the way that in Finland the state doesn’t approve school books, but there’s free competition. They have been asking how the teachers are supposed to be able to choose their material themselves” (Grenman, 2010, p. 23). The national core curriculum (Finnish National Board of Education, FNBE, 2003, 2004) and school-level curricula give the framework for what teachers need to teach and cover in each subject at each grade level. The teachers are, however, free to choose the material (including textbooks) and methods they use. Textbook authors are often teachers themselves (or sometimes university lecturers) and thus textbook users usually trust that the textbook is written according to the curricula. Textbooks commonly come with a teacher’s guide that further aids the teacher in selecting teaching methods and activities for lessons. Finland has two major textbook publishing companies that belong to larger companies (Sanoma Pro and Otava; see Dervin, Hahl, Härkönen, & Layne in this volume). There is competition between these two large textbook publishers and smaller-scale publishers (for example Tammi, Edita, etc.), and depending on the subject, new textbooks come on the market every few years. Competition is, however, important for ensuring the quality of textbooks. The economic situations of the school and the municipality it is located in also play a role in the question of how often textbooks can be replaced with newer ones. While textbooks are free to all students in pre-primary and basic education (grades 1–9) and paid for by taxpayers, in upper secondary education (for students of the ages 16–19) textbooks need to be paid for by the students themselves or their parents. The recycling of textbooks by selling and buying used books in the upper secondary school is common, though not always possible because of new editions. If a student is not planning on writing the matriculation exam on a particular subject at the end of the upper secondary school, s/he may not feel a need to hold on to the textbook after a course is finished. Thus it can be sold further to keep down the expenses. Like in many countries, etextbooks have started to ‘invade’ the Finnish market and this will undoubtedly have an impact on both the market and use of textbooks in the near future.

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In spite of all the fame that Finnish education has recently received, it does not mean that there is no room or need for development. The increase of technology in schools and students’ homes (and teachers’ lack of knowledge and abilities thereof) has raised new needs for both teaching methods as well as materials. The changing forecasts for the types of jobs and work available and necessary in the future as well as the everincreasing intercultural encounters even online demand new kinds of preparedness, skills and knowledge that students ought to develop during their school years. These changes and the reality of growing numbers of students not responding to and engaging with traditional styles of teaching are only some examples of the challenges that the school faces today. The way textbooks are designed to tackle these challenges—and rather turn them into opportunities—is a topical question that needs to be addressed in research. The research group behind this book project, Education for Diversities (E4D) from the Department of Teacher Education of the University of Helsinki, has a duty to look into ‘multicultural education’ in the Finnish context. Multiculturalism and discussion around diversities in education are fairly recent in Finland, and work on different aspects of education is needed. This is particularly relevant in times like ours when Finland is suffering like most countries in Europe from repeated economic crises that have led to anti-immigrant, xenophobic and racist discourses in the media and on the street. Of course we do not want to contribute to the widespread and untenable idea that “Finns (or the people of another nation) are racist.” Generalizing about a whole people does not make sense. Racism is an unstable notion that needs to be discussed and deconstructed. Dealing with diversities of any kind in schools often produces differentiation and hierarchization in spite of teachers’ professionalism and goodwill to treat students fairly and equally (Riitaoja, 2013). Teachers seem to lack tools to analyse and detect discourses that create othering (Layne & Lipponen, 2014). While the literature on textbook research in Finland concerning subjects such as chemistry (Vesterinen, Aksela, & Lavonen, 2013), mathematics (Chung, Lin, & Pai, 2014) and English language education (Kopperoinen, 2011) is plentiful, research on diversities in Finnish textbooks is scarce. One rare example can be found in Bromley and Mäkinen’s (2012) study on civic education textbooks. The authors note: “The specific groups that are represented in textbooks, and how they are depicted, are also influenced by power and dominance relations in society. Many groups remain excluded in textbooks, such as gays and lesbians, which appeared in just a handful of the 154 contemporary textbooks we

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Introduction

examined, or the Roma in Finland, who are mentioned rarely despite existing in large numbers” (Bromley & Mäkinen, 2012, p. 47).

Diversities in Textbooks Globally This section reviews research on diversities in textbooks in other countries. But before, we take a short detour via Asia and Africa to show to our reader that the elements of invisibility, stereotyping, imbalance and selectivity, unreality, fragmentation, linguistic bias, and cosmetic bias (Sadker & Sadker, 1982) are also present in these ‘non-Western’ contexts. The idea that Western countries, like Finland, easily essentialise and discriminate against the Other, is widespread in research (Modood, 2013). Our message here is that these phenomena are universal and we have not chosen the Finnish context to either accuse or point our finger at Finnish teachers, textbook authors or publishers. In the summer of 2014, controversy was created when a blogger based in Hong Kong wrote about a chapter entitled “Living in Hong Kong” in a textbook published in the Special Administrative Region of China. The blogger mentioned a ‘fill-in-the-blank’ task entitled “racial harmony” that included a sketch of a dark-skinned Filipina saying: “I am a Filipino. I am a domestic helper in Hong Kong,” a British man: “I am an English teacher”; a Japanese woman: “I have a sushi restaurant in Hong Kong,” a Chinese woman: “Shanghai is my hometown” and an Indian boy: “I study in an international school.” Other comments found in the textbook included: “Most countries in the north are developed, wealthy and free while southern countries are poorer, with lower education levels, a lack of technology and more political censorship.” The following excerpt is from a novel entitled Messages from Finland by a foreign student from Sierra Leone (Sesay, 1997). The student recalls one of the textbooks he used for geography in his home country: It was through this book that I first learnt about Scandinavia and of Finland. By then I could have been somewhere between 12 or 14 years old. During that time, when we learnt about these regions, little mention was made about the fact that these places were industrialised and well advanced, in fact, apart from few explanations such as the advanced techniques of protecting or measuring the weather, it never crossed my mind that people here [in Finland] were educated and they live in good houses. If this place were really so cold, with so harsh winters, then, the immediate reasoning was that life must be primitive indeed. This is true, because our geography teacher had always focused more or less on explaining about the climatic conditions up here. They wasted no time

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talking about whether there was electricity or skidos (sic) or whether even aeroplanes dared to come here. On coming to Finland, it became evident that this rather detached form of education I had received about the ‘Tundra Regions’ was virtually similar to the kind given to Finnish kids about Africa, whereby their teachers only concentrated in telling them about the hazards of famine, the primitive countryside, and pervading misery and lack. (p. 22–23)

So be it in Hong Kong or Sierra Leon, textbooks can reveal political and relational aspects that tend to treat the Other with stereotypes and biases. Research on the presence (and absence) of diversities in textbooks is rich internationally. Four trends seem to have emerged since 2010: 1. Analyses of the representation of diversities; 2. Diversity and citizenship in textbooks; 3. Language and culture in English textbooks; and 4. The use of textbooks to develop intercultural competence/empathy. In what follows, a very selective presentation of recent studies is proposed: 1.

2.

The first trend is represented by three studies published in 2011, 2013 and 2014. In Moore (2011) the author concentrates on the construction of indigenous students in Australian textbooks. The study shows that they are positioned negatively, i.e. “at risk,” “disadvantaged” and “other.” In “Textbook as a contradictory melting-pot”: an analysis of multicultural content in Korean textbooks, Youngdal Cho and Yunkyoung Park (2013) observe how multicultural content is covered in elementary and secondary schools in Korea through the analysis of 52 textbooks in social studies, ethics and Korean language. The study shows clear signs of inaccuracies, distortions and stereotypes as well as Korean-ethnic centredness. Finally, Schuermans (2013) focuses on the representation of racial classifications and cultural diversity in fifty geography textbooks in Flanders (Belgium). Again the results prove to be disappointing with several examples of misrepresentations of the Other. Citizenship education is a minefield for researching diversities in textbooks. In their article entitled Identity, diversity and citizenship: A critical analysis of textbooks and curricula in Irish schools, Faas and Ross (2012) explore the role of textbooks in developing citizenship and the conception of Irish identity. They note discrepancies between the progressive rhetoric of policy documents and the content of textbooks, where Others are excluded. In a similar vein but with more nuanced results, Moon (2013) analyses 60 civics textbooks in the Republic of Korea. He demonstrates how these textbooks increasingly

8

3.

4.

Introduction

discuss the rights of diverse groups and the need to empower these groups to address problems of social inequality. However hegemonic discourses of national homogeneity still remain. In her studies on Japanese English language textbooks Mieko Yamada (2010, 2011) examines how attitudes to other races and ethnicities are constructed. Yamada discovered that while ‘national’ diversities are presented in the textbooks, nothing is said of diversities within Japan. Finally in Learning empathy through school history textbooks? A case study, Katalin Eszter Morgan (2014) explores how empathy is mediated in textbooks dealing with the topic of “nineteenth century race theories leading to genocide” in South Africa. The author shows that one of the textbooks relies on primary textual sources, presents different perspectives as well as diversity and shows how personal, individual choices play a role in the unfolding of the narratives about the past—thus leading to further empathy.

Suggestions We, the co-editors as well as the authors, would like to make the following suggestions concerning researching diversities in textbooks. First of all it seems more and more essential that research on textbooks is systematically included in the training of teachers-to-be and that they are trained to be critical towards their contents in relation to diversities (treatment of people of different genders, social classes, races, ages, religions, etc.). This should also lead them to pass on these critical skills onto their students. As textbooks will be more widely available in digital format in the future, it means that people will have more opportunities to carry books with them and (maybe) to read them and thus to reflect further on who is represented in the textbooks, how and why. We recognize that one main challenge for the future is putting more emphasis on societal issues and their dimensions in teacher education. However, the end of a period of teacher education does not mean the end of learning one’s trade. In-service seminars focusing on textbooks and the representation of otherness should be systematically organized and offered to teachers teaching at all school levels. Textbooks change every 5–10 years (depending on the subject one teaches) and systematic analyses are a must. We recommend that teacher educators or teacher trainees select ‘good’ and ‘bad’ practices identified in textbooks that they may want to share with their colleagues, trainees and why not—family and friends. Finally, constant dialogue between publishing companies (editors), practitioners and researchers is needed. Researchers should refrain from

Diversities and Interculturality in Textbooks: Finland as an Example

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being overly critical and negotiate meanings and critiques in a slow process. It is important that we researchers pass our results onto publishers and discuss them with editorial teams.

About the Volume The chapters of this book investigate the issue of diversities in textbooks from multiple perspectives, disciplines, school levels and content areas that are approached with various methods. Together the chapters provide examples of ‘diverse diversities’ (Dervin, 2014) but also hidden ideologies and the dichotomies of ‘us’ and ‘them’/’other’ that can be found in textbooks when looking beneath the surface of texts and illustrations. The chapters and their methodologies also serve as examples of tools that can be used for analysing discourses in textbooks in order to expose bias, stereotyping and othering. In addition the studies aim to help develop teachers’ and students’ abilities to encounter diversities and similarities in ways that enhance their sensitivity, self-reflexivity and criticality. A graph of the education system in Finland (Appendix 1; Finnish education in a nutshell, 2012) is provided to help the reader to acquaint him/herself with the school levels and become better oriented when reading the different chapters that discuss textbooks situated at the different levels. Basic education in Finland comprises nine years, from 7year-old students to 16-year-olds (FNBE, 2004). It includes the primary (or elementary) level that covers the first six grades which are usually taught by class teachers. The three last grades of 7–9 make up the lower secondary level where different subjects are taught by specialists educated as subject teachers (the Finnish education system and teacher education are described in detail in Niemi et al., 2012). In the first two chapters of this volume the authors peruse different ABC books that, besides being textbooks that help children to learn to read, are important representations of the current society and times surrounding the children. Heini Paavola and Fred Dervin investigate how multiculturalism is constructed in textbooks and for what reasons a certain multicultural content is chosen in ABC books in different eras. The authors take a closer look at three recent ABC books to see how they bring up multicultural topics and how the books represent and help develop students’ different (multicultural) identities. In a similar vein, the chapter by Tuija Itkonen and Martina PaatelaNieminen discusses the production of othering in ABC (e-)books. Their study looks at the ways the notion of the Other has changed along the

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Introduction

years and discusses the role technological advancement has played in encountering diversities. The authors apply an intertextual method to analyse the multimodal entities created in both print-based visual and digital learning materials that combine text and illustrations. The chapter presents a rhizomatic, open-ended way of learning critical thinking that will help foster awareness from the local to the global and understand a plurality of meanings. Some of the subjects whose textbooks are studied in this volume may be quite particular to the Finnish school system. One of these is home economics which is taught to all students in grade 7 in basic education and offered as an optional subject in grades 8 and 9. In their chapter Sonja Anttila, Jouni Leskinen, Hanna Posti-Ahokas and Hille JanhonenAbruquah examine the role of gender in home economics textbook illustrations. Quantitative and qualitative methods are combined to analyse the illustrations and to peruse the ways female and male are portrayed in them. The study shows how agency is portrayed through a heteronormative conception of gender. The authors first analyse the family roles, ideals and values brought forward in the illustrations and then problematize what is missing from them. Anttila et al. critique the lack of diversity found in performing gender and they warn that the gender equality traditionally attached to compulsory home economics education may not be realized. Another particularly Finnish subject is religious education as a compulsory school subject. Students take part in religious education according to their memberships in religious communities. The majority of Finnish people belong to the Lutheran church and therefore the majority of students also take part in Lutheran religious education. If a student belongs to another religion, s/he is entitled (under some conditions) to be taught religious education in that religion. If this is not possible, the students from the religions that are minorities in Finland participate in secular ethics instruction. Students who do not belong to any religious community also take part in secular ethics. It is in this context that Monika Schatz and Pia-Maria Niemi discuss the relation of intercultural and interreligious education. In their study Schatz and Niemi analyse textbook exercises used in lower secondary Lutheran religious education to teach about world religions. The study problematizes the way ‘us’ and ‘them’ are created and reproduced in the exercises. The authors urge teachers to pay attention to silent ideologies and stereotypes in interreligious education. Aminkeng A. Alemanji, Rita Johnson Longfor and Edda Óskarsdóttir set their study in an international school in Finland and they bring up Holocaust education as an alternative approach to antiracism

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education. In their chapter the authors tackle the sensitive issue of teaching about the Holocaust in secondary education. They use the term racism to include all forms of discrimination and, with two focus groups including students and their teacher, they discuss how a textbook on Holocaust education could work as a valuable tool for antiracism education. In her chapter, Pia Mikander analyses the concepts of the ‘West’ and ‘Western values’ to examine how these concepts are used and what meanings are given to them in textbooks of geography, history and social studies (grades 5–9). She shows how the concept of the West and Western values are used in discussions about the ‘other’ and how the concept of Western values is used in describing today’s world and the future in textbooks. Like all the other authors in the volume, Mikander suggests that constant dialogue between practitioners and researchers is key to influencing the direction change will take. She makes it clear that textbooks should ask critical questions, not provide statements that consolidate old stereotypical views of the world. In the final chapter, Fred Dervin, Kaisa Hahl, Anu Härkönen and Heidi Layne study two textbooks made for an optional upper secondary history course that promises to teach students about intercultural encounters. The authors take a critical look with a discourse analysis method to see how the textbooks treat different others and how Finnishness is portrayed in them in order to find out how intercultural encounters are in fact approached. The textbooks are supposed to help the students to develop critical thinking about alternative worldviews. However, the authors question how well the textbooks are able to meet this aim when the chapters tend to give contradictory and incoherent images of the other and self at the same time. We hope that this volume will work to catalyse advances in research and intervention in (teacher) education and contribute not only to more adequate approaches to diversities in the use of textbooks but also to more sensitive and ethical practices. As hinted at several times in this introduction, the era of e-textbooks is nearing and by developing critical tools to examine how diversities are used, perceived and constructed in teaching materials we can—maybe!—make a change in the future.

Acknowledgments The editors would like to thank the authors who have contributed their chapters to this book as well as extend thanks to Julie S. Byrd Clark, Adrian Holliday, Jari Lavonen and Karen Risager. They would also like to

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Introduction

address their appreciation to the following reviewers for their valuable suggestions to the authors: Lars Kulbrandstad, Hedmark University College, Norway Ulla Lundgren, Jönköping University, Sweden Regis Machart, Putra University, Malaysia Mia Matilainen, University of Helsinki, Finland Päivi Palojoki, University of Helsinki, Finland Hanna Ragnarsdóttir, University of Iceland, Iceland Tanja Riikonen, Université de Montréal, Quebec, Canada Karen Risager, Roskilde University, Denmark Liisa Tainio, University of Helsinki, Finland Virginie Trémion, Catholic University of Paris, France Martin Ubani, University of Eastern Finland, Finland Gross Zehavit, Bar-Ilan University, Israel A special note to thank Lasse Juuti for the permission to include a photograph of his work ‘Connecting People’ (2013) on the book cover (http://lassejuuti.blogspot.fi).

References Bromley, P., & Mäkinen, E. (2012). Diversity in Civic Education: Finland in Historical and Comparative Perspective. Journal of International Cooperation in Education, 14(2), 19–34. Cho, Y., & Park, Y. (2013). “Textbook as a contradictory melting-pot”: an analysis of multicultural content in Korean textbooks. Asia Pacific Journal of Education. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2014.924388 Chung, J., Lin, M. F., & Pai, Y.-J. (2014). A study of math textbooks used in Finnish elementary schools analyzed from various perspectives. Journal of Textbook Research, 7(1), 31–79. Dervin, F. (2013a). Rethinking the Acculturation and Assimilation of ‘Others’ in a ‘Monocultural’ Country: Forms of Intercultural Pygmalionism in Two Finnish Novels. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 34(4), 356–370. —. (2013b). La Meilleure Éducation dans le Monde? Paris, France: L’Harmattan. —. (2014). Towards post-intercultural teacher education: analysing ‘extreme’ intercultural dialogue to reconstruct interculturality. European Journal of Teacher Education.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2014.902441 Eisner, E. W. (1987). Why the textbook influences curriculum. Curriculum Review, 26(3), 11–13. Faas, D., & Ross, W. (2012). Identity, Diversity and Citizenship: A critical analysis of textbooks and curricula in Irish schools. International Sociology, 27(4), 574–91. Finnish education in a nutshell. (2012). Education in Finland. Brochure by Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, Finnish National Board of Education, and CIMO. Retrieved from http://www.minedu.fi/export/sites/default/ OPM/Julkaisut/2013/liitteet/Finnish_education_in_a_nuttshell.pdf —. (2013). PISA 2012: Proficiency of Finnish youth declining [Press release]. Retrieved from http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/Tiedotteet/2013/ 12/pisa.html?lang=en&extra_locale=en Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE). (2003). National Core Curriculum for Upper Secondary Schools 2003: National Core Curriculum for General Upper Secondary Education Intended for Young People. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/download/47678_ core_curricula_upper_secondary_education.pdf —. (2004). National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2004: National core curriculum for basic education intended for pupils in compulsory education. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/english/curricula_and _qualifications/basic_education Fleming, D. (1989–1990). High school social studies textbooks: Good or bad compared to what? The International Journal of Social Education, 4, 7–9. Grenman, K. (2010). The Future of Printed School Books. Helsinki: VTT. Retrieved from http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/workingpapers/2010/W144.pdf Jobrack, B. (2012). Tyranny of the Textbook. Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kopperoinen, A. (2011). Accents of English as a lingua franca: a study of Finnish textbooks. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 21(1), 71–93. Kramsch, C. (2013). History and memory in the development of intercultural competence. In F. Sharifian & M. Jamarani (Eds.), Language and Intercultural Communication in the New Era (pp. 23– 37). New York, NY: Routledge. Layne, H., & Lipponen, L. (2014). Student teachers in the contact zone: Developing critical intercultural ‘teacherhood’ in kindergarten teacher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education,

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2014.980780 Lowen, J. W. (2009). Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Modood, T. (2013). Multiculturalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Moon, R. (2013). Globalisation and citizenship education: Diversity in South Korean civics textbooks. Comparative Education, 49(4), 424– 439. Moore, T. (2011). “Textbook identities”: Constructing Indigenous students as ‘other’ in educational texts that promote inclusion and diversity. Representation of otherness: The Eleventh International Conference on Research of Textbooks and Educational Media (Conference publication). Kaunas, Lithuania: IARTEM. Morgan, K. E. (2014). Learning empathy through school history textbooks? A case study. Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13642529.2014.898815 Niemi, H., Toom, A., & Kallioniemi, A. (Eds.). (2012). Miracle of Education: The principles and practices of teaching and learning in Finnish schools. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Pingel, F. (2010). UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision. Paris, France: UNESCO. Riitaoja, A.-L. (2013). Toiseuksien rakentuminen koulussa: Tutkimus opetussuunnitelmista ja kahden helsinkiläisen alakoulun arjesta [Constructing Otherness in school: A study of curriculum texts and everyday life of two primary schools in Helsinki] (Doctoral dissertation). Studies 346. Helsinki, Finland: University of Helsinki. Sesay, L. S. (1997). Messages from Finland. Turku, Finland: Reindeer Books. Sadker, M. P., & Sadker, D. M. (1982). Sex Equity Handbook for Schools. New York, NY: Longman. Schuermans, N. (2013). Geography textbooks and the reproduction of a racist and ethnocentric world view among young people in Flanders. Belgeo [online]. Retrieved from: http://belgeo.revues.org/11594 Yamada, M. (2010). English as a multicultural language: Implications from a study of Japan’s junior high schools’ English language textbooks. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 31(5), 491–506. —. (2011). Awareness of race and ethnic diversity in Japan’s junior high schools’ English language textbooks. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies: An International Journal, 8(3), 289–312.

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Vesterinen, V.-M., Aksela, M. K., & Lavonen, J. (2013). Quantitative analysis of representations of nature of science in textbooks using framework of analysis based on philosophy of chemistry. Science & Education, 22(7), 1839–1855. Williams, J. H. (2012). Identity, school textbooks and rebuilding memory. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education (pp. 1119–1122). New York, NY: Sage.

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Introducction

A Appendix 1: 1 Educatio on system in n Finland

Source: Finniish education inn a nutshell.





CHAPTER ONE THE ALPHABET GONE WRONG? DIVERSITIES IN THREE FINNISH ABC BOOKS HEINI PAAVOLA AND FRED DERVIN

Abstract Children’s literature and especially educational books do not emerge out of a vacuum. As such they can inform us of the ideologies of their authors and the political zeitgeist of an era. Many articles and chapters have looked into how diversity and otherness have been represented in children’s literature but there is an urgent need to evaluate this aspect in ABC books. In Finland very few studies have been published on this phenomenon. This chapter proposes to fill this gap by examining the position of diversities and multiculturalism in three influential ABC books. By applying a reflexive discourse analytical perspective on the books we found that the three textbooks represent diachronically varied approaches to diversities and multiculturalism. We conclude that more is still needed to open up the idea of diversities and to include discussions of for example social justice.

Introduction Children’s educational literature can be controversial—or more precisely made to be polemic—just like any other educational products (Edwards & Saltman, 2010). In 2014 a scandal erupted when three children’s books were removed from libraries in the sovereign city-state of Singapore, sparking protests. The three books in question, And Tango Makes Three, The White Swan Express and Who’s In My Family, present portraits of family diversity. For example And Tango Makes Three is based on the true story of two male penguins who nurtured and raised a

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Chapter One

young penguin together. The books were removed after a library user complained. Petitions and angry reactions from social media ensued. One Twitter user wrote ironically: “Since when is it a social norms to marry a girl that you just met at a party? Will [the National Library of Singapore] ban Cinderella too? (sic).” Instead of destroying the books, following the protests, the libraries decided to move them to the social sciences collection in the adult section… To our knowledge there has not been any such scandal in the Finnish context in recent years. Is this a sign that Finns are more ‘open’ than for example the Singaporean authorities? Or is it because children’s educational literature is less controversial or not prone to including ‘controversial’ diversities in the Nordic country? In this chapter we examine a specific subgenre of children’s education literature: ABC/alphabet books. Like many other countries Finland has a long tradition in publishing such educational books. The first book to ever be published in Finnish in 1543 was actually an ABC book called Abckiria (Tainio & Grünthal, 2012). The book contained prayers, sacraments as well as spelling exercises and was designed especially for priests and teachers who would read the book to their congregations. Of course nearly five centuries later Finnish ABC books look very different and serve different purposes. For one thing Finland has become more diverse than ever. Although diversity has always been part of Finnish society—like all societies—our era of accelarated multiculturalism has transformed the way Finns see themselves, others and education. Theoretically this is what should be happening in educational circles too, but the confusion around the notions of multiculturalism and diversity often leads to these terms being made to refer mostly to certain types of immigrants from ‘afar.’ For Wood (2003, p. 29) this creates a “gulf between the real diversity of the world and the artificial and often imaginary diversity of our social experiments is very large.” In this chapter we examine three ABC books published in Finland. Bearing in mind that such books have aesthetic, psychosocial, and informative/instructional impacts on children, we ask the following questions: What sort of diversity do the ABC books present to the young readers? And perharps more importantly, what ideologies and values can they potentially impose on children?

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A Few Words about Diversities in the Finnish Curricula of Basic Education (2004, 2016) Just like textbooks at other levels of education, ABC books are very much influenced by official and political discourses. In our case the Finnish Curricula of Basic Education play an important role. As a reminder, there is a national core curriculum that is adopted and developed locally into more specific curricula by municipalities and schools in Finland. The current core curriculum of basic education (Finnish National Board of Education, henceforth FNBE, 2004) poses as its core values: human rights, equality, democracy and the acceptance of cultural diversity. All these terms are problematic when dealing with diversities in education. Putting cultural diversity and all the other notions on the same level seems to hide potential ethnocentrism and biases towards ‘others’ or to equate the idea that cultural diversity (the ‘Other’) does not share our values (human rights, democracy, etc.). Furthermore the idea of accepting cultural diversity appears to be both passive and questionable. It resembles in a sense the flawed ideology of tolerance: one tolerates the presence of others but then what? Recognizing and accepting are not enough to create equality and equity. For the Finnish National Core Curriculum of Basic Education (FNBE, 2004) equality refers to a limited amount of elements such as ethnic, regional and gender equality. The Curriculum seems to ignore other important aspects such as social class, language and the intersection of these different elements leading to inequality. The Curriculum (FNBE, 2004, p. 12) also states “teaching is based on the Finnish culture, which has evolved through interaction with indigenous, Nordic and European cultures.” This highly political statement can be interpreted as referring to the fact that Finland is considered to be part of the so-called Western world. In other words: the ‘West’ represents ‘us,’ and the rest (‘East’?) represents the ‘other’ or ‘others’. For Laplantine and Nouss (1977) these discourses are counter-intuitive as they ignore the fact that all ‘cultures’ are the result of multifaceted and complex mélanges and métissages, from the East and the West. For Amartya Sen (2006, p. 129): “given the cultural and intellectual interconnections in world history, the question of what is ‘western’ and what is not would be hard to decide.” However the dichotomy East and West allows individuals, institutions and nations to differentiate themselves and to create and compare often exaggerated (cultural) difference. The Curriculum (FNBE, 2004) also mentions the category of ‘immigrant children’ as a separate category and seems to suggest that it is only through their presence that Finnish society has diversified—as if the

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Chapter One

latter had always been homogeneous and/or unchanging. The mention of the concept of cultural identity in this regard can easily give the wrong impression that it only emerges in childhood and adolescence, and that it is not changing and context-dependent (Riitaoja, 2013, p. 140; Dervin, Paatela-Nieminen, Kuoppala, & Riitaoja, 2012). The year 2016 will mark the coming into force of a new National Core Curriculum in Finland. In one of the latest drafts (15.4.2014) basic education will aim to maintain and strengthen respect for human rights and respect for life, justice, well-being and peace (FNBE, 2014). These should contribute to democracy and active engagement. The original text from 2004 has been slightly modified to include more emphasis on the fact that the Finnish cultural heritage is the result of many and varied interactions with different cultures. Besides, the concept of identity, in its ‘liquid,’ changing and negotiable form (Bauman, 2004), is also strengthened in the curriculum. Yet the word diversity, which is ‘sprinkled around’ in the document, is used in a very loose way, referring from time to time to the problematic characteristics of ‘different linguistic and cultural backgrounds’—which is a very limited, “artificial” (see Wood above). As such the sociolinguist M. Heller (2007, p. 342) has rightly noted: “canonical associations of language, culture and individual identity break down” and thus need to be questioned.

Our Take on Multiculturalism and Diversity in ABC Books The use of the two keywords of multiculturalism and diversity in education reminds us of a saying in the Chinese text called Chuang-Tzu (4th BCE): “A name is merely the guest of reality.” As such reality is far too complex to be grasped, theorized and analysed by means of these two polysemic concepts. According to Coulby (2006), these concepts emerged from different historical contexts and thus have slightly different meanings and interpretations. In the field of education, the concept of multiculturalism has been discussed, amongst others, by the American scholar James Banks (2008), who suggested already long ago that multiculturalism means a lot more than just ‘foreignness’ or ‘immigrants.’ Banks (2009) includes in the concept multiple identity markers such as gender, religion, social class, language, sexual orientation, etc. and the intersection between these elements. Dervin has strongly highlighted the fact that researchers and practitioners concentrate on the diverse diversities of each individual and that they put an end to equating multiculturalism to the Other with a ‘capital O,’ the one who has crossed a national boundary

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only (Dervin, 2012; Dervin & Keihäs, 2013). He also argues that this can easily lead to ‘identity taxidermy’ (Dervin, 2012), like the stuffing and mounting of the skins of animals for display or study, i.e. confining the ‘other’ to a solid form, a restricted understanding of who she is and what she represents (see Dervin, Hahl, Härkönen, & Layne, this volume). In this chapter we consider diversity and multiculturalism as elements that should not lead to “wrap people in [their] suffocating embrace” (Prashad, 2001, p. xi). This is why we move away from the concept of culture and are interested in the “unity of human experience” (Billeter, 2006, p. 82). One of the biggest mistakes in multicultural education is to consider the ‘other’ as someone who has a solid unchangeable culture and identity who needs to learn ‘our’ culture and whose ‘culture’ we need to understand. This is of course often done with the best intentions of respect and tolerance. However, like Jahoda (2012, p. 300) we believe that culture is not a “thing, but a social construct vaguely referring to a vastly complex set of phenomena.” Our take on multiculturalism and diversity follows the following principles. When considering them we are first of all interested in identity processes and the instabilities that go with them, taking into account power relations and hierarchies between representatives of different ‘cultures,’ ethnic groups, etc. (see Breidenbach & Nyíri, 2009, pp. 343–345). The idea of context is essential in this approach as depending on the context and interlocutors, people can identify in different ways. Furthermore our interest lies in deciphering the ideologies that are explicitly or implicitly hidden behind the representations of multiculturalism and diversity in education. Adrian Holliday (2010) summarizes a similar approach when he proposes that “the aim must be to put aside established descriptions, seek a broader picture and look for the hidden and the unexpressed” (p. 27). In this study we examine these elements in a specific genre, ABC books used in Finland. Critical studies on children’s educational literature have employed similar approaches. For example, through their work on children’s literature Edwards and Saltman (2010, p. 12) explain that: “Children’s literature, and more particularly, the visual images in children’s books can do the ideological work of extending hegemonic discourses within a society about collective identity, memory and normative social practices.” In a similar vein, adopting a critical race theory, Mendoza and Reese (2001) propose to look for answers to the following questions when examining children’s educational books:

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Chapter One

– Are characters ‘outside the mainstream culture’ depicted as individuals or as caricatures? – Does their representation include significant specific cultural information? Or does it follow stereotypes? – Who has the power in this story? What is the nature of their power, and how do they use it? – Who has wisdom? What is the nature of their wisdom, and how do they use it? – What are the consequences of certain behaviors? What behaviors or traits are rewarded, and how? What behaviors are punished, and how? – How is language used to create images of people of a particular group? How are artistic elements used to create those images? – Who has written this story? Who has illustrated it? Are they inside or outside the groups they are presenting? What are they in a position to know? What do they claim to know? – Whose voices are heard? Whose are missing? – What do this narrative and these pictures say about race? Class? Culture? Gender? Age? Resistance to the status quo? (Mendoza & Reese, 2001) In our analysis of the three Finnish ABC books under review, our perspective derives from these questions.

Previous Research In this section we review studies on the construction of diversity and multiculturalism in children’s education literature. Such books can influence how children perceive themselves and people of backgrounds different from their own. Since the 1960s hundreds of such studies have appeared in journals and volumes, often as a reaction to the ‘pernicious’ (Harris, 1993) invisibility or negative and stereotypical depiction of diversity in textbooks. Librarian Larrick’s (1965) ground-breaking study entitled “The all-white world of children literature” has contributed to increased interest in researching the topic. Before we review recent studies on children’s literature, we would like to mention that many studies have looked into the construction of diversities and multiculturalism in textbooks in general. McDiarmid and Pratt (1971) have analysed how different groups (Jews, immigrants, Muslims, Black people, and American Indians) are depicted in Canadian social studies textbooks. The authors noted that there was little attempt at the time to discuss basic issues concerning racial differences or prejudice

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in these textbooks. More recently, Terra and Bromley (2012) analysed 600 secondary social science textbooks to examine the presence of multiculturalism-related content around the world from 1950 to 2010. The scholars note a global increase in inclusion of for example minorities in such textbooks. In a similar vein an article by Hintermann, Markom, Weinhäupl, and Üllen (2014) show that debating migration has become a major emphasis in Austrian textbooks. Yet these success stories are not confirmed in other contexts. For example, in his study on immigrants in Canadian government-funded ESL textbooks, Gulliver (2012) demonstrates that the depiction of successful immigrants is biased and one-sided. In a study on sexuality in Norwegian textbooks Røthing and Svendsen (2011) explain that tolerance towards sexual minorities is constructed as a feature of Norwegianness and at the same time, presents immigrants as intolerant towards this aspect of diversity. Finally Mikander and Holm (2014) examine global population growth in Finnish geography, history and social science school textbooks. They show how non-Western populations are portrayed as growing and moving in uncontrolled and threatening ways while the West is not said to be suffering from such phenomena (see Mikander in this volume). We now turn to research on picture books. While research is scarce on the topic in Finland, international scholars have examined the construction of diversities in many other countries. Most diverse identity markers have been researched. Pescosolido, Grauerholz, and Milkie (1997) documented changes in racial images as depicted in American picture books. Their diachronic study shows that images of Blacks vary significantly over time. In the same context (the USA) Peterson and Lach (1990) have looked into gender stereotypes in children’s books. They found that negative stereotypes about women, who used to be portrayed as passive and dependent, have decreased in quantity but that some still remain. More recently Lester (2007) examined how lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender themed children’s books actually reinforce heteronormativity by having characters conform to specific gender roles. Interestingly, many studies have examined how deaf characters are portrayed in children’s book illustrations. For instance Golos and Moses (2013) argue that such characters are only depicted as having a pathological condition or disability in children’s books. The main message that seems to emerge from the books they have analysed hints at the fact that these children should be “fixed” (Ibid.). In many of the studies on multiculturalism/diversities in children’s books, authors suggest ways of using them to cater for diversity. For Mendoza and Reese (2001), picture books that depict diversities should

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allow children to develop their understanding of others and to ‘boost’ the identity of children of diverse backgrounds. Using a critical race theory perspective the authors examine the pitfalls of books featuring Mexican American characters (Ibid.). In a similar vein Yoon, Simpson, and Haag (2010) critically examine underlying messages in multicultural picture books in relation to assimilation ideology. Their results show that the ‘dominant culture’ is still glorified in such books (Ibid.). Many articles attempt to demonstrate how picture books can be used to teach for social justice. O’Neil (2010) argues that, while picture books can stimulate readers to question and rethink societal norms, some still feature normative attributes and ideologies. The author thus gives examples of how children can be made to reflect on these pitfalls and ‘liberate’ their own sensitivities (Ibid.).

Diversities and Multiculturalism in Finnish ABC Books— Three Examples In this section we examine three Finnish ABC books. As a reminder our research questions are: What sort of diversity do the ABC books present to the young readers? What ideologies and values can they potentially impose on children? According to Koski (2007, p. 35) “ABC books in Finland have had two major purposes: to teach children to read, and to guide them to understand the essence of the moral principles of the day.” While for example in the 1920s patriotism, moral conscientiousness and religious ideas prevailed, today’s objectives still rely on the symbols of the nation-state with a touch of multiculturalism—Divine intervention has disappeared (Koski, Ibid.). According to a teacher quoted by the author of the http://www. tunturisusi.com/aapinen/ website, which is dedicated to Finnish ABC books, “A good ABC book should make children feel comfortable and make learning easy. It should also be easy to use, clear and contain plenty of nice and varied supplementary material for the teacher. Illustrations are also crucial. The artwork should be rich, abundant and colourful so that the teacher can take advantage of the book in many ways.” In Finland ABC books for 1st graders are published about every three years. These books are often accompanied by a teacher’s guide, which provides teachers with relevant theory, lesson plans, pedagogical tips and additional material. The guide might also contain information regarding certain themes, such as how to include multiculturalism in one’s teaching. The evolution of the world depicted in Finnish ABC books has been slow. According to Laine (2002), non-Finnish animals such as elephants,

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giraffes, gorillas, and camels were only added to ABC books in the 1880s– 1890s. Later came a lion and a monkey, but these six animals are the only non-Finnish animals to be found in ABC books before the 1960s. In the 1908 Aapisessa (In the ABC) no mention of foreign countries or cultures was made. The inclusion of an African character in an ABC book illustration occurred in the 1950s, accompanied with the following sentence “A Negro washes his face, but he does not get white.” In Suomen Lasten Aapinen (Finnish Children’s ABC Book, 1951), the story called Pepe’s sea voyage, shows a small dark-skinned child—whose gender is unidentified—floating in the sea, calling out to a ship: “Pepe was black as black is black (…) He was born a negro, which has made him so peculiar.” In their article in this volume, Itkonen and Paatela-Nieminen analyse this excerpt as follows: “Both the written and the visual texts produce Pepe as the Other (see Kristeva, 1991). S/he is dehumanized not only by the lack of attention by the publisher (or illustrator) to the gender, but also by the use of adjectives such as ‘peculiar.’” These racist and stereotypical images and texts were common at the time. In the 1960s other “distant cultures” were introduced more realistically (Laine, 2002, pp. 114–117). However, even in 1972, accompanying the letter N. appeared a picture of a girl who eats a banana, wearing a loincloth, and the text to the image read: “Negros enjoy bananas” (Ruuska, 2011). In what follows we are examining in more detail how multiculturalism is constructed in three popular ABC books published in Finland: The Golden ABC Book (2002, Kultainen Aapinen in Finnish), Kirjakuja’s ABC Book (2008, Kirjakujan aapinen) and Little Woods ABC (2009, Pikkumetsän aapinen). The choice of these books is based on the following criteria: – the 2002 textbook is a pioneer in the genre of ABC books in Finland as it was the first one to include non-Finnish characters – the two other books were published recently (and updated on many occasions) and have been highly popular in Finnish schools until today – the publishing company Tammi replaced The Golden ABC Book with Kirjakuja’s ABC Book in 2008 – all these ABC books were written by Finnish teachers and teacher educators. Some of the authors are well known. For instance the author of Little Woods ABC, Mervi Wäre, is the most famous writer of ABC books in Finland. Some of her books have even been translated into Japanese. She has written ABC books since the 1980s.

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Our analysis of the ABC books is first of all diachronic as it considers the ABC books in terms of publication date. We proceeded as follows: Taking into account pictures, drawings and the words used in the books, we read them several times and took some notes regarding the construction of diversities. Our method is reminiscent of reflexive discourse analysis (Dervin et al., 2012; Dervin & Keihäs, 2013), which allows the researcher to go under the surface of discourses (text + images) in order to unearth silences and ideologies. This method is compatible with our approach to diversity and multiculturalism (Dervin, 2012).

Diversities ‘Wrapped in the Suffocating Embrace’ of Culture The analysis starts with the oldest ABC book to have included ‘nonFinnish’ characters: The Golden ABC Book (Krokfors, Lindman, Marttinen, & Parvela, 2002). The main characters are two white Finnishspeaking children. Three non-Finnish characters also appear from time to time: a girl adopted from China, an Estonian-born boy as well as a darkskinned boy (Ibid.). Interestingly the latter does not have a name nor can one hear his voice in the book stories. None of these children’s background is problematized or explored in the book or in the teacher’s guide. In two of the stories from the teacher’s guide which deal with an adopted girl, she is simply referred to as a “blonde girl,” without a name. The accompanying picture seems to suggest that the girl does not look like a ‘native Finn.’ The choice of this character might be linked to the fact that in the early 2000s the largest immigrant groups in Finland were from Estonia and Somalia. This era also marked the beginning of a discussion around adopted children and identity-related issues in Finnish society. The position and power relationships between the characters can also be examined on the basis of the artwork used in the book. Emilia Turpeinen (2007) explored The Golden ABC Book from a multi-cultural perspective, especially by analysing the illustrations. She found that the main two characters appeared over 180 times in the illustrations while the “multicultural” characters about 30 times. Turpeinen (Ibid.) also counted each of the characters’ utterances in the book: around 100 for the main characters and 5 for the multicultural individuals. The main characters are thus in general more visible and the ‘silence’ and ‘absence’ of the immigrant children might give the wrong message about their status in Finnish society. In the same study (Turpeinen, Ibid.) one-graders were

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interviewed and did not find all multicultural characters just as familiar or interesting as the main characters. Knowledge about multiculturalism in The Golden ABC Book thus remains superficial and at the ‘taxidermy’ level of their identities (Dervin, 2012). For example, one illustration shows a world map/globe and the texts make occasional references to some other countries, and “cultures.” The teacher’s guide contains a few stories, which could enable the teacher to expand the children’s knowledge of other countries. Other “cultures” are represented by animals such as the panda, tiger, giraffe or an elephant. “Culture” tends to highlight stereotypical details (e.g. Chinese cuisine, Chinese lanterns) (Turpeinen, 2007) and to “wrap people in [their] suffocating embrace” (Prashad, 2001: p. xi), not allowing for example hybridity or disrupted identities to emerge (e.g. a Black child presented as being a Finn). The question remains if the illustrations represent for example THE Chinese “culture” when 1.3 billion people compose Chinese society. As mentioned earlier, it is common for textbooks to define someone’s “culture” from an ethnocentric point of view (Mendoza and Reese, 2001). The book’s ideology concerning multiculturalism can easily spread hegemonic discourses about the ‘superiority’ of Finns compared to the ‘other’ (Edwards & Saltman, 2010, p. 12). The others tend to be depicted as exotic and strange, and Finnish “culture” as normal and usual. The Golden ABC Book, however, was a pioneer in the sense that the characters were not just ‘native Finns.’ Even though there was no guidance and/or extra information concerning these issues in the teacher’s guide, they might still give the teacher an opportunity to address multiculturalism in the curriculum.

Ethnic and Linguistic Diversities In the second ABC book under review, Kirjakuja’s ABC Book 1 (Kilpimaa-Lipasti, Komulainen, Newton, Nikkinen, Bagge, & Savolainen, 2008), the main characters form a ‘typical’ Finnish family with a cat and a dog. The latters have human-like characteristics and play a central part in the book. In addition to the main characters a few minor characters appear in certain chapters of the book. This ABC book was published by the same publishing house as the previous book after it was discontinued. Multiculturalism is represented somewhat at the beginning of Kirjakuja’s ABC Book 1, with a big picture of a map of South America, with the names of cities written in foreign languages. The map shows the route of a ship, in which the father of the family works as an engineer, in South America. In addition to the map one can also see a pizza box and

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Gouda cheese as well as a suitcase, on which are written the names of countries in foreign languages. The ABC book also contains a song whose words reflect what one may encounter abroad, mainly things or animals that are not typical in Finland. Relating foreign languages/letters and foreign cultures is a typical feature of ABC books and has appeared in numerous books before. The focus is often on the mere presence of ‘exotic’ letters but the books fail to address any key issues related to multicultural education (see section Our Take on Multiculturalism and Diversity in ABC Books). These letters as well as the foreign songs are just decorative additions rather than central elements and the ABC book still seems to celebrate the hegemony of the ‘dominant culture’. However, the images and discourses produced in this ABC book could be used to reflect on how the ‘other’ is represented and on the construction of for example stereotypes (Holliday, 2010; Yoon et al., 2010). Foreign letters are also used in a chapter where the dog character, Tahvo, claims that he is descending from the Aztec God Xolotl, the god of fire and lightning, sickness and deformities who brought humankind and fire from the underworld. Xolotl is actually often represented as a dog. This chapter has some potential for discussing the idea of origins with the children who use the book. This could help them to understand that roots may be distant and close at the same time, and that people might feel that they belong to different places (see Banks, 2009). Another interesting chapter from the book concentrates on languages. The readers are first made to discuss if animals have a common language or if for example dogs bark differently in Swedish and if Chinese cats meow in Chinese. This chapter provides an excellent opportunity to discuss different languages with the students, and to identify, for example, the languages spoken by the students in the classroom. The same goes with the chapter entitled “Human Languages,” where the children sit around the teacher in school and the teacher explains to them that there is a variety of languages in the world, and that people do not necessarily understand each other even in the same country. Also the idea that a father and a mother might have different native languages is presented in the book and thus that some families speak different languages. Languages spoken in Finland are also discussed. Interestingly, not only the so-called official languages (Finnish and Swedish) are mentioned but also the Sami language, sign language and the languages of the largest immigrant groups such as Estonians, Russians and Somalis. In the teacher’s guide the authors make suggestions as to how the topic of language could be implemented in class and the school. They also advise the teachers to practise systematic greetings in different languages with their students.

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In the same chapter a dark-skinned Congolese girl is introduced. She says that she uses the Lingala language, a Bantu language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Angola and the Central African Republic. In the book the little girl teaches others how to say “hello” in this language. This chapter is a good example of how no explicit exoticising (or caricature) of the little girl’s roots or language is used as she is presented as being part of the group and her voice is clearly heard. Accompanying puppets for teachers also includes the dark-skinned girl. However by only including a black character it can easily mean that diversity in the Finnish context is still very much attached exclusively to dark-skinned immigrants from Africa (see Riitaoja, 2013)—a very limited representation of diversities and multiculturalism (Dervin & Keihäs, 2013). This ABC book undoubtedly can stimulate students to “question and rethink societal norms” (O’Neil, 2010), yet some features remain ideological and somewhat normative. While the book itself emphasises mostly ethnic and linguistic diversities, the teacher’s guide contains a text about sign language and how to handle the issue of deafness and sign language with the students. This is a sign that the authors have tried, in a sense, to move beyond a mere ‘ethnic-centric’ approach to diversity in their work—as was the case in previous ABC books published in Finland.

First Steps to Multicultural Education? Finally, in Little Woods ABC (Wäre, Lerkkanen, Suoranta-Hollo, Korolainen, Parkkinen, Kirkkopelto, & Ketonen, 2006, 2007), the main characters are animals who represent (un-)ambiguously the Other par excellence (see Itkonen & Paatela-Nieminen in this volume). The multicultural figure is a Canadian Raccoon called Alaska, who is an immigrant. It should be noted that Alaska is one of the main characters of the book. In the book a lot is said about her family and childhood home. Alaska’s adjustment process to her new home country and at the same time her identity formation are presented throughout the ABC book. The book also contains tales of homesickness and growing pains, and the readers get an idea of the fact that the process is not necessarily easy, and that integration can occur little by little. The stories clearly express the fact that Alaska wants to hold on to her Canadian identity when adapting to Finland. This puts forward the message that people can identify with many groups, and that identity formation is a continuous process. It also tells the readers that in Finland, diversity and multiculturalism are becoming commonplaces.

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In the ABC book, through Alaska’s character important learning contents concerning different habits and languages are presented through the various day-care centres and schools that are described in the story. Possibly children with a migrant background in the Finnish class might find it easy to identify with Alaska while ‘native’ Finnish children can learn to understand other cultures and learn to mirror their own culture to another (see Ruuska, 2011). An important principle emerging from the book is learning from each other: Alaska learns new and useful ways in Finland and teaches their own habits to Finnish animals. The characters witness non-violence, equality and fairness, inclusion in the book, which are also the basic values of the Finnish National Core Curriculum (FNBE, 2004). Little Woods ABC can be interpreted as promoting multicultural education objectives. It strives to highlight the aims of multicultural education from the perspective of the immigrant figure Alaska. However, the teacher cannot find background information or content support to this from the teacher’s guide. Thus, the teacher needs to look for the information elsewhere. Discussed and debated topics remain at a general level in the ABC books, and teachers should be provided with definitions of key concepts such as equality, equity and social justice. In addition, the teacher’s guide could also give some information on second language learning and teaching, and in particular, how they differ from education in Finnish as a first language.

Concluding Remarks The treatment of diversities and multiculturalism in Finnish ABC books seems to have changed in recent years. However the diverse contents of these books do not always appear to be satisfactory and there are signs that “the alphabet has gone wrong”... Going back to Mendoza and Reese’s (2001) questions used to examine children’s education books, one can easily note that: – characters outside Finnish culture, be they animals or humans, are still depicted as some sort of caricatures, except maybe in the case of the girl from Congo in Kirjakuja’s ABC Book 1 – their representation does not include significant specific information about what it means to be an immigrant or simply background information concerning language and identity issues – the power in the stories appears to be still in the hand of the majority characters; the same goes for wisdom, behaviours and traits

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– the authors/illustrators of the ABC books are still very much representatives of the majority white population—which could be the reason why some diverse voices are not heard or are silenced in all the books – the stories found in the three Finnish ABC books tell us a lot about how uncritically questions of culture, identity and ethnicity are understood and grasped by the book authors and editors. On the basis of these results, and in a similar vein as Itkonen and Paatela-Nieminen (this volume) who suggest an intertextual approach, critical intercultural literacy for both teachers and students is needed more than ever. For Lewison, Leland, Flint, and Möller (2002) this should entail: learning–teaching how to disrupt commonplaces found in the books (e.g. stereotypes about gender, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, etc.); to interrogate multiple viewpoints (avoid tokenism where one specific character is made to represent a group); to focus on socio-political issues (an ABC book is never used in a vacuum); and to take action and promote social justice in order to avoid invisibility. It is the duty of ABC book writers, publishers but also teacher educators to ensure that critical literacy is explained, problematized and implemented when working with ABC books. It is hoped that the new curriculum coming into force in Finland in 2016 will alter the present situation.

References Banks, J. (2008). An Introduction to Multicultural Education. Boston; MA: Pearson. —. (2009). The Routledge International Companion to Multicultural Education. London, UK: Routledge. Bauman, Z. (2004). Identity. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Billeter, J.-F. (2006). Contre Jullien. Paris, France: Inter Allia. Breidenbach, J., & Nyíri, P. (2009). Seeing Culture Everywhere. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Coulby, D. (2006). Intercultural Education: Theory and Practice. Intercultural Education, 17 (3), 245–257. Dervin, F., & Keihäs, L. (2013). Johdanto uuteen kulttuurienväliseen viestintään ja kasvatukseen. Jyväskylä: Suomen Kasvatustieteellinen seura. —. (2012). Impostures interculturelles. Paris: L’Harmattan. Dervin, F., Paatela-Nieminen, M., Kuoppala, K., & Riitaoja A.-L. (2012). Multicultural education in Finland: Renewed intercultural

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competencies to the rescue? International Journal of Multicultural Education, 14 (3), 1–13. Edwards, G., & Saltman, J. (2010). Picturing Canada: A History of Canadian Children’s Illustrated Books and Publishing. Toronto, ON, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE). (2004). National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2004: National core curriculum for basic education intended for pupils in compulsory education. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/english/curricula_and_qualifications/basic_edu cation —. Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet: Luvut 1–12. Luonnos 15.4.2014. [National Core Curriculum for Basic Education: Chapters 1–12. Draft 15.4.2014.] Retrieved from http://oph.fi/download/ 156870_perusopetus_perusteluonnos_luvut_1_12.pdf Golos, D. B., & Moses, A. M. (2013). Rethinking the portrayal of deaf characters in children’s picture books. Frontiers in Psychology, 4(889), n.p. Gulliver, T. (2012). Immigrant success stories in ESL textbooks. TESOL Quarterly 44(4), 725–745. Harris, V. J. (1993). Contemporary griots: African American writers of children’s literature. In V. J. Harris (Ed.), Teaching Multicultural Literature in Grades K–8 (pp. 55–108). Norwood, MA: ChristopherGordon. Heller, M. (2007). The future of bilingualism. In M. Heller (Ed.), Bilingualism: A Social Approach (pp. 340–345). HoundmillsBasingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Hintermann, C., Markom, C., Weinhäupl, H., & Üllen, S. (2014). Debating migrations in textbooks and classrooms in Austria. Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 6(1), 79–106. Holliday, A. (2010). Intercultural Communication and Ideology. London, UK: Sage. Kilpimaa-Lipasti, N., Komulainen, M., Leskinen, P., Nikkinen, I., Bagge, T., & Savolainen, S. (2008). Kirjakuja 1 Aapinen. Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Tammi. Kilpimaa-Lipasti, N., Komulainen, M.,Kotilainen, H., & Okkonen-Sotka, P. (2008). Kirjakuja 1 Aapinen. Opettajan opas. Kevät. Helsinki: Sanoma Pro. Koski, L. (2007). From God to friendship: The changing moral orders of educational stories in ABC books. In A. Antikainen (Ed.), Transforming a Learning Society: The Case of Finland (pp. 33–51).

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Explorationen: Studien zur Erziehungswissenschaft, vol. 49. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. Krokfors, L., Lindman, M., Marttinen, T., & Parvela, T. (2002). Tammen Kultainen Aapinen. Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Tammi. Krokfors, L., & Marttinen, T. (2002). Tammen Kultainen Aapinen. Opettajan opas. Syksy. Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Tammi. Jahoda, G. (2012). Critical reflections on some recent definitions of “culture”. Culture & Psychology, 18, 289–303. Laine, T. (2002). Kirkossa, kaupungissa, kolhoosissa. Suomalaisten aapisten arvoista Agricolasta 1960-luvulle. In Pitkäranta, I. (Ed.), ABC. Lukeminen esivallan palveluksessa. (pp. 79–132). Helsinki: Helsingin yliopiston kirjasto – Suomen kansalliskirjasto. Laplantine, F., & Nouss, A. (1977). Le métissage. Paris, France: Flammarion. Larrick, N. (1965). The all-white world of children’s books. The Saturday Review, 63–65. Lester, N. (2007). (Un)Happily ever after: Fairy tale morals, moralities and heterosexism in children’s texts. Journal of Gay and Lesbian Issues in Education, 4(2): 55–74. Lewison, M., Leland, C., Flint, A. S., & Möller, K. (2002). Dangerous discourses: Using controversial books to support engagement, diversity, and democracy. The New Advocate, 15(3), 215–226. McDiarmid, D., & Pratt, G. (1971). Teaching Prejudice. A Content Analysis of Social Studies Textbooks Authorized for Use in Ontario. A Report to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Toronto, ON; Canada: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Mendoza, J., & Reese, D. (2001). Examining multicultural picture books for the early childhood classroom: Possibilities and pitfalls. Early Childhood Research & Practice, 3(2). Retrieved from http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v3n2/mendoza.html Mikander, P., & Holm, G. (2014). Constructing Threats and a Need for Control: Textbook Descriptions of a Growing, Moving World Population. Review of International Geographical Education Online, 4(1), 7–25. Retrieved from http://www.rigeo.org/vol4no1/Number1 spring/RIGEO-V4-N1-1.pdf O’Neil, K. E. (2010). Once upon today: Teaching for social justice with postmodern picturebooks. Children’s Literature in Education, 42(3), 40–51. Pescosolido, B. A., Grauerholz, E., & Milkie, M. A. (1997). Culture and conflict: The portrayal of blacks in U.S. children’s picture books

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through the mid- and late-twentieth century. American Sociological Review, 62(3), 443–464. Peterson, S. B., & Lach, M. A. (1990). Gender stereotypes in children’s books: their prevalence and influence on cognitive and affective development. Gender and Education, 2(2), 185–197. Prashad, V. (2001). Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity. New York, NY: Beacon Press. Riitaoja, A-L. (2013). Toiseuksien rakentuminen koulussa. Tutkimus opetussuunnitelmista ja kahden helsinkiläisen alakoulun arjesta. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto. Opettajankoulutuslaitos. Tutkimuksia 346. Røthing, Å., & Svendsen, S. H. B. (2011). Sexuality in Norwegian Textbooks: constructing and controlling ethnic borders? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34(11), 1953–1973. Ruuska, K. (2011). “Minä olen pesukarhu, pesukarhut pesevät aina ruokansa” Monikulttuurinen näkökulma Pikkumetsän aapisessa. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto. Opettajankoulutuslaitos. Sen, A. (2006). Identity and Violence. New Delhi, India: Penguin. Tainio, L., & Grünthal, S. (2012). Language and literature education: Principles and reflections of mother tongue and literature. In H. Niemi, Toom, A. & Kallioniemi, A (Eds.), Miracle of Education: The Principles and Practices of Teaching and Learning in Finnish Schools (pp. 149–160). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Terra, L., & Bromley, P. (2012). The Globalization of Multicultural Education in Social Science Textbooks: Cross-national Analyses, 1950–2010. Multicultural Perspectives, 14(3), 136–143. Turpeinen, E. (2007). Anna, Jaanus ja Eelis. Tammen kultainen aapinen monikulttuurisesta näkökulmasta kahdeksan ekaluokkalaisen näkemysten sävyttämänä. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto. Soveltavan kasvatustieteen laitos. Wäre, M., Lerkkanen, M-K., Suoranta-Hollo, L., Korolainen, T., Parkkinen, J., Kirkkopelto, K., Ketonen, R., & WSOY Oppimateriaalit Oy (2006). Pikkumetsän aapinen [Little Woods ABC]. 1. painos. Helsinki: WSOY. Wäre, M., Lerkkanen, M-K., Suoranta-Hollo, L., Korolainen, T., Parkkinen, J., Kirkkopelto, K., Ketonen, R., & WSOY Oppimateriaalit Oy (2007). Pikkumetsän aapinen. Opettajan opas 1a. 1.–5. painos. Helsinki: WSOY Wood, P. (2003). Diversity: The Invention of a Concept. New York, NY: Encounter Books.

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Yoon, B., Simpson, A., & Haag, C. (2010). Assimilation ideology: Critically examining underlying messages in multicultural literature. Journal of Adolescents & Adult Literacy, 54(2), 109–118.



CHAPTER TWO HOW IS THE OTHER PRODUCED IN TWO FINNISH ABC (E-)BOOKS— AN INTERTEXTUAL READING TUIJA ITKONEN AND MARTINA PAATELA-NIEMINEN

Abstract ABC (e-)books are powerful cultural artifacts. Their function extends beyond the primary concept of teaching children the alphabet and learning to read and write. As educational media, ABC books, and their multimodal digital learning extensions, serve as vehicles for prevailing ideologies, social and cultural values, traditions, norms, and knowledge. The shift from print-based texts to increasingly visual and digital texts creates complex multimodalities that require new ways of comprehension and literacies, as well as learning strategies. Learning is transforming from linear to open-ended and rhizomatic, which means that pedagogical demands are on teachers to expand their and students’ repertoires of interaction among (extended) texts, critical reading, and interpretive meaning-making skills. We use a specific intertextual method designed for picturebooks, art education, and arts to explore Otherness and its multiple and diverse meanings. The method supports open-ended and rhizomatic learning and aims to create plurality of meanings by providing an intercultural dialogic space to explore how cultural attitudes, concepts, and contents are transformed and carried on multimodally within specific national contexts, which in this study is Finnish.

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Introduction The Finnish national core curriculum, currently under revision and to be launched in 2016 (the Finnish National Board of Education, FNBE, 2014) calls for multiliteracies that are based on a broad understanding of visual, verbal, kinesthetic, auditory, analog, and digital texts. As learning environments are becoming increasingly multimodal, learner-centered, and multifaceted (e.g. Walsh, 2006), complex skills are needed to comprehend the multiple meanings of interpretations from plural points of views from the very start of formal education. Primary education in Finland starts at seven years of age, which also marks the formal start of literacy teaching. Some alphabet instruction is given to six-year-olds in kindergarten (noncompulsory), and some children are able to read by the time they start school. The FNBE does not define or approve the content of school textbooks. Rather, it remains the publishers’ responsibility—which exposes textbooks and ABC books to the content (and ideological) choice considered marketable by the publishers (see also Dervin, Hahl, Härkönen, & Layne, in this volume). In addition, teachers in Finnish schools are not only free to choose the ABC books they use, but also how, and to what extent, the books and digital learning environments are used within the national and the school’s curricular framework. What follows is that the teacher’s choice of an ABC book has the potential to influence students’ perception of the society, ideologies, and cultures around them. Conflicts of interests may also rise. For instance, the Finnish Forest Association and parents involved in forestry criticized an ABC book for enforcing negative attitudes towards forestry and not addressing it as an integral part of preserving nature (Talouselämä, 2014). Adams St. Pierre (2000) confirms that a subject exhibits agency by constructing it through available discourses and cultural practices, which we, in this study, explore through ABC books. ABC books, along with textbooks on various subjects, are powerful cultural artifacts (Foster, 2011; O’Sullivan, 2009; Varga & Zug, 2013). Their function extends beyond the primary concept of teaching children the alphabet and learning to read and write (Carpenter & Prichard, 1999; Kotkaheimo, 1989). ABC books are also fundamental in the early stages of the formal socialization process of children. They offer children a specific view of the surrounding society and times—one determined by those in power (national governments, authors, illustrators and educators) with particular goals in mind. Textbooks, particularly those in history and geography, are rarely neutral or free of ideology or (national) politics; the

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contents and design are instrumental in disseminating and reinforcing prevailing ideas, values, and knowledge (Apple, 2008; Mikander, this volume; Osberg & Biesta, 2010; Pesonen, 2013; Varga & Zug, 2013). Along the direction of critical textbook scholars Foster (2011) and Foulds (2013), we see that visual and literary narratives in ABC books have the potential not only to perpetuate biases but also to influence students’ identities and perceptions of the world. ABC book illustrations provide a view into local and global representations. We examine these representations with a focus on how they transform within the genre of ABC books and within a specific (Finnish) cultural context. The shift from print-based texts towards an increased prominence of visual, electronic and digital texts makes today’s living and learning environments ever more multifaceted (Duncum, 2004). New pedagogies are needed to address the multiple new literacies (Kress, 2003; Poyas & Eilam, 2012; Serafini, 2010; Walsh, 2006). Digital multimodal environments require various conceptualizations and allow for multiple ways of comprehension, as Walsh (2006) argues. Teachers and students need strategies and critical reading skills to navigate among and to make sense of the complex intertextualities (Callow, 2006). Personal meaning-making systems are intricate. It is not a given that the learner’s comprehension of the contents of textbooks always meets that of the teacher or the decision maker (Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991). Claims that pedagogical contents of learning environments are understood, negotiated and transformed by students as such (Foster, 2011) are contested as learning is becoming learner-centered and self-directed. Many of us may carry traces of ideas and concepts represented in our ABCs and first books/primers as part of our identities and social selves. For some of us, these traces may work as they were intended to—reinforcing our sense of identity and self-worth, empowering our social selves, and adding to our feeling of belonging. For others, reading meaning into representations may lead to questioning whether we ‘belong’ or what is considered ‘normal’— the traces remain accompanied with discomfort and unease. According to Howarth (2002, p. 25), “we use representations to position ourselves, to claim common identities and to defend ourselves against stigmatizing or marginalizing practices”. Dervin (2014) asserts that individuals, in context with others, (re)construct their identities through negotiating representations of themselves, their experiences and their surroundings. We see it necessary to pay close attention to both visual and verbal representations in ABC books specifically for the reason that these representations are central for children learning to read and comprehend.

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Our intent with this study is two-fold: 1) to offer a critical perspective on the contents of two Finnish ABC (e-)books, and 2) to demonstrate how texts accumulate and convey meanings in ABC books. We do this by applying an intertextual method originally developed by Paatela-Nieminen in 2000 for children’s picturebooks, art education, and arts. The method provides a way to explore what kind of (inter)cultural attitudes and concepts, traditions, and values exist, and how they transform and carry on via multimodal textual modes within specific Finnish visual-linguistic context. We demonstrate a way to explore Otherness by examining it in the cultural space of plural and hidden meanings (Kristeva, 1984; see also Holliday, 2010; Paavola & Dervin, this volume) through the method. This study aims to add to the critical tradition of textbook research (see Foster, 2011). In addition, we wish to add to the comprehension of learning as a semantic and rhizomatic web with multiple and open-ended meanings. As such, intertextuality supports multiliteracies by offering a way to study a variety and combinations of textualities.

ABC Books—Special Picture Books Considering how fundamental ABC books are, research on them is surprisingly scarce. Numerous studies cover literacy and reading comprehension. However, ABC books as such, and specifically illustrations in them, remain in the margins of contemporary children’s literature and textbook research. For example, one of the most recent studies by Colomer, Kümmerling-Meibauer, and Silva-Diaz (2010) mentions ABC books only in one chapter of a study of 18th century picturebooks. As educational instruments, ABC books are rarely included as a specific category of children’s picturebooks, books that are considered a unique form of art with interartistic, interdisciplinary, and intermedial relations. While many children’s literature researchers think that ABC book illustrations do not cross into the artistic, Nikolajeva and Scott (2000) and Silvey (2002) argue that ABC books are part of the children’s picturebook genre, only with a special relationship between words and pictures. Nikolajeva and Scott (2000) place ABC books under nonnarrative texts with one or few pictures, the function of which differs from those in narratives and visually focused children’s books. According to Silvey (2002), children learning to read need simple, uncluttered books with familiar words representing concrete objects linked to the letters, and illustrations in ABC books should be obvious and straightforward. However, to the readers’ delight, there are artists who have taken the license to break the rules and quite often do it brilliantly, as did Sir Walter

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Crane in The absurd ABC (1874) and Dr. Seuss in Dr. Seuss’s ABC book (1963). Dr. Seuss, for instance, creates wordplay with nonsense meanings for words and images by ridding the sign of either its signifier or the signified and giving it a visual form (Nikolajeva & Scott, 2000). In traditional ABC books ‘C stands for Cat’—the signifier matches the signified. In one of the few Finnish studies of textbook and ABC book illustrations, Hannus (1996) claims that 10-year-olds’ learning is only limitedly supported by illustrations in textbook spreads. Kotkaheimo (1989) categorized Finnish ABC books from the 16th century to the 1950s into religious and secular education, manual/labor and motor skills teaching. Kuivasmäki (1990) mentions ABC books only in accordance with Finnish literature teaching. Studies of children’s literature in England show that the fractures of post-colonial culture express ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity (O’Sullivan, 2009). O’Sullivan (2009) also asserts that “children’s literature overtly or latently reflects dominant social and cultural norms, including self-images and images of others” (p. 334). Pesonen (2013) adds that the physical characteristics of children depicted in children’s literature are significant markers for either inclusion or exclusion. We see ABC books as a valuable source for studying embedded ideologies, national narratives, beliefs, values, and traditions (see Varga & Zug, 2013).

Multiple Other/ness The term Other generally refers to an opposition, exclusion, or a difference in a negative way. Our intertextual approach is poststructuralist in that the Other refers to a hypothetical place or space of signifiers. Rather than reading texts as fixed meanings, we interpret them at their intersections within a textual space (see Bakhtin, 1998). The meanings are in endless flux, and, when explored, the intertextual space provides openended and multiple meanings waiting to be found and created. According to Kristeva (1984), the Other refers both to the subject him/herself and to the texts. As a subject is divided into the unconscious and conscious, Kristeva calls a subject both semiotic and symbolic, in which the uncertain, mysterious, and formless semiotic being meets the grammatical and the symbolic. The semiotic is the active process and the symbolic the visible form; the semiotic manifests through the symbolic. Texts also have an unconscious where textual traces remain; the unconscious of the text becomes visible as the cracks in the surface mobilize the meanings stored in the text’s memory (Kristeva, 1984). With

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this supporting our exploration of Other/ness in ABC book illustrations, we also apply rhizomatic reading by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) for whom rhizome is a metaphor for a disordered and non-centered network; one may find connections anywhere rhizomatically. As researchers, we interpret texts intertextually from a subjective point of view and produce the Other from the texts that transform and pull against the symbolic law. Our practice of (re)reading makes us the producers of the text (see Barthes, 1998). We also apply Kristeva’s (1991, 1993) concept of Stranger to our exploration of Otherness: the Stranger (foreigner/outsider/alien) is hidden in our subconscious and participates in ourselves. When we acknowledge the Stranger (Otherness) in ourselves, it becomes possible for us to accept the difference in the Other. For Kristeva, the term Other can refer to anything or anybody: we project upon the Other that which is undesirable in ourselves or the repressed in our unconscious. Othering, as defined by Dervin (2014, p. 1), is “an interdisciplinary notion that refers to differentiating discourses that lead to moral and political judgment of superiority and inferiority between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and within groups”. With a critical approach to othering, Dervin (2014) stresses its construction in social interaction that takes into account both power relations and the intersectionality of different identity markers.

Intertextuality and Multimodal Learning Environments Intertextuality assumes that readers make connections among several texts. A text is understood as any verbal or nonverbal sign conveying meaning. Intertextuality does not address a work of art per se (Barthes, 1998) but explores it as a textual space where the visual, auditory, spatial, verbal, and/or gestural texts intersecting with each other create new and plural meanings. Instead of studying a text solely in relation to the artist, artifact, and tradition, it is explored in relation to the wider systems of texts, genres/discourses, and cultures (Makkonen, 1991, p. 18; PaatelaNieminen, 2000). Today’s living and learning environments, saturated with visual and digital texts, have caused a textual shift from print-based media to complex multimodalities (Walsh, 2006; Poyas & Eilam, 2012). The growing dominance of multimodal texts and digital technology has challenged the notion of traditional literacy (Kress, 2003). Multimodality refers to the complexity of communicating meaning through the use of different culturally accepted semiotic resources (Poyas & Eilam, 2012). Multiliteracy is a wider concept of which multimodality is one aspect

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(Poyas & Eilam, 2012). In educational contexts, this has its extension as edutainment (education + entertainment) on digital platforms, which are also available for most Finnish ABC books. Readers of sites navigate among segmented information in linear, non-linear, and/or multilinear or multi-directional ways (Walsh, 2006). Walsh continues that “there is no beginning or end” (2006, p. 32); the reader may choose his/her own pathways depending on personal interest and goals for learning (see also Osberg & Biesta, 2010). The logics of the screen and visual image dominating children’s lives challenge teachers to think and teach beyond the often linear logic of writing (Kress, 2003). The ways of comprehending are linked to previous experiences and to cultural and social knowledge within specific contexts. This is where critical reading is necessary. These preconceived schemas need to be challenged, explored, and renewed in order to find and create new and multiple meanings. We believe that the intertextual method provides a way to do this. Osberg and Biesta (2010), among others, see that web technology is transforming education towards fostering ideas on more individual, learner-centered, and self-empowered learning. However, Lenz Taguchi (2010) reminds us that this shift in learning processes does not exclude the interconnected action taking place among learners and their simultaneous real and virtual surroundings. It actually shifts the attention to what takes place between discourses and organisms in the learning environment (Lenz Taguchi 2010, p. 20). In line with Deleuze and Guattari (1987), she focuses on ‘rhizomatic logic’ in learning processes, for this logic is “constantly renegotiating and reinventing the goals of learning in the specific local contexts of learners and teachers” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 19). She also extends the rhizomatic as a necessity for learning to be inclusive of complexity, diversity, and multiplicities; these processes allow new connections, intensities of affects, and desires (Ibid.). We agree with Lenz Taguchi quoting Olsson: “The rhizomatic process takes us beyond the fixed, predefined, structured and taken-for-granted in its movements and experimentations” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 22). We understand learning as rhizomatic, resembling a complex web of interconnections, and believe that intertextuality, as a pedagogical method, supports both logical (linear) and subconscious/rhizomatic (non-linear) learning.

Methodology and Data The intertextual method, applying linguistic and poststructuralistic theories from Deleuze and Guattari (1987), Genette (1997a; 1997b), and Kristeva (1984) was developed by Paatela-Nieminen (2000, see also 2008;

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Paatela-Nieminen, Itkonen, & Talib, forthcoming). The intertextuality in this method indicates four phases of reading texts. In our study we apply it to Finnish ABC books to study and produce intertextual relations: 1) relations between visual and written texts in the two Finnish ABC books, 2) relations and dialogues between different texts within the Finnish ABC book genre, 3) relations within an extended cultural (Finnish) context that includes popular culture, media, design, fine arts, music, literature, etc. Our study does not include the fourth way that reads the (re)mixed new and old interpretations into an artistic/visual product, providing a way to produce new meanings. We use the method described above to explore intertextual relations through two current ABC books: Taikamaan aapinen [Magic Land ABC] (Raikunen, Leino, & Saramäki, 2013) and Pikkumetsän aapinen [Little Woods ABC] (Wäre, et al., 2013). These two books are referred to by their English translations. There are several reasons for these two to be selected: both are current for this study and include an interactive e-learning environment. The digital formats simulate the books’ pages and include a few additional reading, writing, and auditory extensions. For this reason analyzing the visual material is the same, whether digital or printed. The two books differ from each other extensively—one is distinctly ideological (environmental protection) and the other an intertextual collage of both global and local illustrations, rhymes, narratives, fantasy, and fairy tales. The illustrations and written text in Little Woods ABC support the ideology and portray an insulated image of Finnishness, whereas Magic Land ABC eclectically illustrates children’s reality in 2014 by (re)mixing elements of the international/global with what is considered Finnish—without ignoring fantasy and imagination. Artistically, Little Woods ABC is targeted at children, whereas Magic Land ABC is an ambivalent picture/ABC book targeted to both children and adults offering multiple levels and ways of comprehension. The books require different ways of reading: Little Woods ABC proceeds in a traditional linear way and Magic Land ABC provides an intertextual way of reading by simultaneously layering several stories which allows multiple ways of comprehension (see Bakhtin, 1998, on polyphonic reading). Our research problem materialized as we studied these two ABC books subjectively. The starting point is the reader’s perception of a text within another text. We became interested in how Otherness appeared to us in them. As we examined the Little Woods ABC, to us, the character Alaska represented the Other in the illustrations and in the written elements. As for the Magic Land ABC, we found it was Finnishness that was othered in it.

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Next we studied these two books in relation to an extended genre of ABC books. We explored the ABC book collection of the Minerva Library (Department of Teacher Education) at the University of Helsinki. We examined the ABC books as visual and verbal texts and noticed how representations in the illustrations varied from one another and how they had transformed over time. ‘Representation’ to us is a meaning produced through multimodal texts. We then created a visual continuum of these texts, non-linear but taking its shape in forms of transformations, (re)cycles and accumulations, and studied it palimpsestically, from the newest to the oldest (see Genette, 1997b) within the ABC book genre. Genette (1997b) developed a linguistic system to study the subtle differences in the transposition categories that include tones such as the serious, polemical, satirical, ironic, playful and humorous. This continuum provided us a clear difference in how the Other was transformed interculturally. We then studied the difference of Otherness in relation to texts within the Finnish cultural context. This process is mainly guided by the subconscious (Kristeva, 1984) that releases the hidden traces and embedded meanings. The rhizomatic (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) process offers a way to produce untraceable meanings. It provides a space to explore and play with existing texts, to find hidden and/or embedded meanings of Otherness, and to create new and multiple meanings. For us as the researcher-subjects, visual texts relate to other multimodal texts in the intertextual space in which they intersect. In this space, texts have a variety of meanings depending on what the subject interprets in the signification process. In the following, we proceed into our intertextual analysis guided by the first three phases of the intertextual method.

Phase 1a: Other/ing in ABC Books The following demonstrates how the Other is produced in Little Woods ABC, and how we see Finnishness othered in Magic Land ABC. For us, it is the character of Alaska that is constructed as the Other in Little Woods ABC. Detail by detail the reader realizes that Alaska is the foreigner, an immigrant from Canada, in Pikkumetsä—a small Finnish village. Her name, Miss Alaska Raccoon, refers to North America, and her animal character, the raccoon, is a non-endemic species to Finland. She clutches a large carpet-bag (an old-fashioned North-American travel bag) with her belongings in it. Her habits are unfamiliar to Ansa, the squirrel, and to Ossi, the rabbit, as they and the angry reporter, Crow, disconcertedly watch from a distance how she washes her fruit in the river. She looks a bit

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the-odd-one-out for she wears flowing skirts and, occasionally, pearls. Her character is allowed to show emotions like melancholy and anxiety, and she misses her loved ones far from Pikkumetsä. Alaska’s Otherness is underlined when she causes suspicion and alarm among her mates: it turns out to be her who has left unfamiliar marks on the snow with her snow shoes. Her otherness softens as the story continues. Alaska loves nature and is involved in environmental protection with her Finnish mates—an ideology that this ABC book strongly conveys. Canadian wilderness meets Finnish nature when Alaska receives her kayak by mail order—only they use it as a sled on the way home from the post office and end up with it being pulled by an old-fashioned moped. To us, the nostalgic moped signifies the vanishing Finnish countryside living—all that still lives on as cultural traces in the Finnish collective memory. We read that this event with the kayak and the moped marks a start for Alaska’s journey into Finnishness. In terms of Otherness, a telling exchange of words takes place when Alaska excitedly knocks on the door of her twin fox mates Kulta and Muru (Little Woods ABC, pp. 140–141, translation by us): Alaska: Canada! There’s a show about Canada on TV today! We must see it. Kulta: Who’s there? Alaska: Canada! Kulta: We don’t know any Canada. Muru: What do you want? Alaska: There’s a show about my homeland on TV. Muru: I see. Alaska: You said I can come and watch TV some time. Kulta & Muru: Some time is very different from now. Alaska: Am I not allowed in? Muru: Well, ok then.

Alaska, looking worried, quickly slips in before either Kulta or Muru could call off the invitation. The twins resist the Foreigner in all of Kristeva’s (1991) sense: they are suspicious of her and not very willing to share their space. They need to be reminded of their promise and allow her in because she starts to cry. The conversation continues as Alaska admires the cleanliness and order of things inside the house. Noticing the teapot on the table she wonders whether the twins were inviting her to tea. The twins did not, and it seems a near desperate attempt not to have to invite her in when they claim they have no cups. Alaska has seen the cups outside in the garden “just waiting there all winter for you to invite me to tea some time” (Little

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Woods ABC, p. 141). As if by surprise, the twins announce that “just now happens to be that some time” (Little Woods ABC, p.141), and Alaska is accepted in. Discourses of Otherness often implicate the foreign ‘savage’ needing to be ‘civilized’ (Said, 1978). Here, however, it is Alaska who tactfully teaches her hosts good manners. Alaska participates in the everyday chores, trails along, and plays with her mates. She swims, grills sausages, sleds, and cross-country skis just as a ‘typical’ Finn would—in essence, exhibiting her agency by constructing it through cultural practices (Adams St. Pierre, 2000). Comfortable in nature on her own, Alaska stays in a lean-to in the woods and knows how to fish. She plans to spend her summer in the woods by the water—a fantasy relived by the multitudes of Finns making their way to cottages by the lakes each summer. She honors the Finnish Independence Day by wearing her pearls with a fancy dress and shoes, and participates in Christmas and Easter festivities in traditional Finnish ways. For Kalevala Day (the Finnish national epic) she plays the traditional Finnish zither quite happily in her own familiar dress but with a head band reminiscent of a Finnish national costume. She is surrounded by iconic, nostalgic Finnish artifacts like shoes, a rucksack, and a horn made of birch bark—and seems to own them. She is not missing home any more. Has she become a Finn in the end? The Otherness of Alaska is smoothed over. Questions arise as the Foreigner (Kristeva 1991, 1993) in Alaska is contested by her mates. What brought Alaska to Finland? Why has the publisher chosen to leave her without a past, a personal story? What are her reasons to stay and what happens to her Canadian-ness? For all we know, Alaska could be of Native American or of French descent since she is from Canada. Her willingness to adapt to all things Finnish is never questioned; she is expected to become a Finn and, quite gently, slips right into Finnishness (as is presented by the publisher). This seems to us assimilation at its ideal. Major problems are not expected, for, after all, she is from North America, the ‘civilized’ West (see also Mikander, in this volume; Said, 1978). Neither does her character represent any controversial ethnicity, religion or (sub)culture that might cause conflict, nor does she represent any disadvantage such as low economic status or disabilities of any kind. Canada fits the Western framework of Finnish educational context and ABC/textbook publishers. The Western world’s perception of non-Western people needs not be contested here (see e.g. Bhabha, 1994; Prasad, 2003; Said, 1978) since Alaska’s character attributes to the Occidental rather than the Oriental. As much as it appears an attempt to avoid the controversies that certain ethnicities or cultures

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might entail, it seems that the publisher of Little Woods ABC shows no real ownership of the issue of diversities.

Phase 1b: Othering Finnishness Instead of othering the foreign into the Other the texts in Magic Land ABC suggest the othering of Finnishness (see Kristeva, 1991; Dervin, 2014). The design and images of the ABC book are organized by styles and tones of illustrations: images of ‘reality’, of fantasy, and of those used for teaching the alphabet. This approach is intertextual in that it requires comprehension on several layers at once and invites polyphonic reading. The characters Assi (a girl) and Eino (a boy) live in the city of Raikula, a seemingly lively and colorful Finnish city—but not quite. Each ‘realistic’ view of the city with its people, buildings, or surroundings is depicted from multiple perspectives, colors a touch too bright for being ‘Finnish,’ and lines intensely crisp. The reader is drawn into discovering things not really expected in Finnish scenery: set among the familiar lakes and woods are less familiar trees, houses of fanciful constructs, mountains reminiscent of the Alps or the Himalayas, Disney-like castles, cows and sheep, airplanes and boats, all in seemingly pleasant harmony. When the children look through their great-grandmother’s magic piece of glass, they enter the fantasy world busy with images that contain intertextual links to international/global rhymes, tales, and visual cultures. The realistic is mixing with the fantastic in a curious and playful way. When it is time to learn letters, name items, and practice reading, the style of illustrations turns instructive with the use of soft pencil lines on sepia or light blue backgrounds. Attention is drawn to images reminiscent of nostalgic visual teaching boards and ABC books from the past. The othering of Finnishness in Magic Land ABC starts from the ‘reality’ scenery described above, and continues throughout the book. The fact that Assi and Eino find the magic glass from among greatgrandmother’s things sets Finnishness into the mythic past and history at a distance. Right from the start, Finnishness is presented as the distant and mysterious but exciting Otherness. It manifests in the hazy scenery of lakes, islands, swans and forests, and it is recognizable in the way light falls on snow or in the way the white clouds rest against the blue sky. With this hazy scenery in the background, page 10 foregrounds a crisp mélange of things with traces to the global: an old-fashioned red American truck is loaded with a curious fairytale house with balconies and staircases, a yucca plant in a pot, a clothesline, a bathtub with ducks all atop the truck and flagged with a yellow sun on European Union blue—all familiar but

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again not quite. At first glance, it seems to us that the illustrator has set the ‘Finnish’ swan flying off the page with a few ruffled feathers loose (as he does with the peace doves on United Nations day as well). For this publisher, Finnishness seems to be in trouble. It takes a keen eye to notice that what was first read as swans may also be white ducks. Is European ABC imagery re-entering the Finnish ABC books? It seems to us that images still circulate, as they did early in both picturebooks and ABC books (see Nikolajeva & Scott, 2000; Kotkaheimo, 1989). Magic Land ABC goes even further by preserving Finnishness in an open-air museum with typical old wooden buildings and historical items (p. 32). Role-players demonstrate ‘authentic’ jobs of milking the cows by hand or weaving cloth on a loom for the visitors. Right in the middle of the illustration is a painting repeating the exact same scene; is Finnishness a thing of the past and soon to be viewed as a collectible? The view of the village seems surreal in all its museum-like neatness, yet there are children playing badminton, people going about their daily work. Towards the end of the book, the reader finds her ‘way back home’ into the cozy scenery of neat yellow or red familiar-looking houses set on the side of the farmed fields and woods (p. 105). The cows graze under the blue skies as the hills in the distance are just as they should be—all with a single, steady perspective and a folklore rhyme of Finnish localities, scenes, and animals (p. 146) affirming the foundations. Othering Finnishness in this encapsulated way seems to tell the reader that, in this manic reality of multiple views, matters and meanings may get twisted, the past provides the foundations, and the visuals reinforce the entrance into the collective cultural memory. Does this leave any room for acceptance of Other/ness in the end?

Phase 2: The Visual and Verbal within the ABC Genre The most interesting difference to us in the ABC books was Otherness. To examine how Otherness varies in ABC books, we studied the Minerva ABC collection, from which we selected the following ABC books: Reuhurinne [Romping Rise] (Kallioniemi & Roikonen, 2013), Aapinen [ABC] (Knuuttila, Kääriäinen, Turunen, & Voutilainen, 1967), Kultaiset aapissadut [Golden ABC tales] (Tynni & Haavio, 1968), Satuaapinen [Fairy Tale ABC] (Tynni, 1955), Suomen lasten aapinen [Finnish Children’s ABC] (Hälinen, 1951), and Lasten koti-Aapinen [Home ABC for Children] (Unknown, 191?). We created a continuum of these ABC books and studied it palimpsestically to discover differences in Otherness.

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We read texts as traces of Otherness. The difference we found interesting in the continuum was that of variations of tones in the way Otherness is produced. Compared to Alaska’s seriousness in Little Woods ABC, the mode of Romping Rise is playful and more in the line of Magic Land ABC. Instead of portraying Native Americans as objects, Romping Rise (pp. 8–9) depicts children dressed as Indians tiptoeing among teepees set up in the school gym. The necessary paraphernalia is present: a tomahawk, a spear, bows and arrows, a peace pipe, a dream-catcher, pottery, a fire, corn on the cob, and popcorn for today’s children. The style of illustration is similar to that of the fantasy sections in Magic Land ABC: light and airy, crisp and clear, just as one would expect with children happily caught up in play. There is no implication of objectifying Native Americans nor is the tone derogatory but instead is accepting of cultural distinctions. Reading the poem Intiaanit [Indians/Native Americans] in the 1967 ABC (p. 125), a trace of a memory links it to our childhood songs. Images illustrating the poem include a teepee, smoking fire, an Indian on a horse, mountains, and the sun—all somewhat dramatized as in stills from old movies. The verse supports the Other produced through the images: distancing and mystifying the Other, the words paint a calm but alert night scene of an Indian village “behind the mountains” with gentle “winds in the trees”, all with “the awful hooting of the owl”. A sense of danger present as “no one can escape us”, and a guard is watching over the village where a baby sleeps but the mother is awake. Hawk Eye, the hero, has earned his feathers, and his red skin is excused for he is allowed to ride a white horse. The oldest images in the continuum objectify Native Americans mostly as exotic clichés, however, not quite in as derogatory way as blacks. In the 1955 Fairy Tale ABC, the “I” stands for “Indian” with an illustration of a male Native American, bare-chested in yellow buckskin pants, with a feather headdress, a necklace, a bow, and an arrow. Crouching down as if trying to hide and, looking determined, he points with a finger at a human foot print. The rhyme describing him as red-skinned reaffirms the skin color of the image. A similar image is repeated in black and white illustrating Intiaanitarina [Indian story] in the Golden ABC tales of 1968 (p. 5). The image that causes the most unease for us is that of a black female figure kneeling by a pond (p. 8) in both Golden ABC tales and Fairy Tale ABC. She is clad in a colorful hip cloth with rows of bangles on her arms, ankles, ears, and neck, and is depicted with full red lips, very white eyes, and black curly hair up in a bun. The rhyme tells of her trying to wash her

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black face because it is dirty—to no avail. It is an uneasy feeling realizing these images are not that many generations away from us, however nostalgic some of the illustrations may appear today. The character Pepe in Finnish Children’s ABC (1951) is a far cry from the smoothed-out Otherness of Alaska discussed above. Illustrating a rhyme Pepen merimatka [Pepe’s Sea Voyage] (p. 121), the image depicts a black child Pepe (a foreign boy’s name) androgynously dressed in a red Western dress and pearls. With an anxious look of fright on his/her face, s/he waves an arm out for help for s/he is floating in the sea inside a wooden tub. In the horizon a modern white cruise ship sails to the rescue of the hungry and lost black child. The verse, radically derogatory by today’s standards, tells that Pepe was as “black as black is black” and appears “very peculiar to us as such”. Completely helpless and irresolute, s/he is crying for help as “the wind steers the tub far, far East”. Both the written and the visual texts produce Pepe as the Other (see Kristeva, 1991). S/he is dehumanized not only by the lack of attention by the publisher (or illustrator) to the gender, but also by the use of adjectives such as “peculiar” (see Smith, 2006). The verse reinforces the act of othering: s/he is allowed no agency and his/her precarious action of going on a sea voyage in a wooden tub with no compass and oars reflects the behavioral uncertainty of the Other (see Smith, 2006). We found only one image indicating people at a distance (other than home, village, and school environment) in the 191? Home ABC for Children. In the foreground of a small black-and-white line drawing, a four-dog-team pulls a person in a sled on a snowy hillside. The three teepee-like huts in the background are recognizable to Finns as Sami/Lapp dwellings in the Northern part of Finland. The caption, in a manner reminiscent of a travel advertisement (read: exotic), mentions “far North where Aurora Borealis can be seen”—which reaffirms the placement of the Other as mysterious and in the distance.

Phase 3: Other/ness in the Cultural Context The analysis of ABC books now leaves the ABC genre and extends into the cultural context. We ask why and how does Finnish culture produce these types of variations in the tones of Otherness, and what does the accumulation in representations tell about its culture and ways of seeing? We produce traces of Otherness through the process that allows for both our conscious and subconscious to release the hidden and embedded associations (Kristeva, 1984). Our practice of (re)reading makes us the producers of the text (see Barthes, 1998), and the nature of the

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subjective process and the learning are rhizomatic. Reading images rhizomatically (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) frees them of time and fixed roots and exposes them to be examined. The discovery of multiple and diverse meanings is enhanced by our dialogue as researchers. The most polemic image, the character of Pepe in Finnish Children’s ABC (1951), links us to a popular transformation of the painting The Aino Myth by the national artist Gallén-Kallela (1891). In a women’s magazine Me naiset advertisement (Lähdesmäki, 1995) the roles of the male and female are reversed. The traces return us intertextually to one of the quintessentially Finnish paintings. The national artist Gallén-Kallela (1865–1931) was inspired by the Kalevala epic, a compilation of ancient poetry celebrating the mythic origins of Finland. The ambivalent Pepe’s pose is closely reminiscent to that of Aino, the fair maiden who is trying to escape from the old sage Väinämönen’s reach—only Väinämöinen in the advert is replaced with the ship, emblematic of Western superiority. The image of Aino is firmly set in the Finnish collective cultural memory. Supported by the rhyme that disables the character completely, the disharmony of Pepe in place of Aino sets the tone of Otherness in quite a controversial manner. For the young reader in the 1950s the derogatory tone of the image most likely went unnoticed since Finns had rarely seen a black person before the 1952 Olympic Games. Other textual rhizomes connoting Otherness in the image of Pepe include, for instance, the music of a Finnish rap artist Raptori, the Tintin comic books by Hergé, and Donald Duck comics. Our rhizomes also connected, among others, to specific sweets as part of Finnish cultural memory. These include, for instance, a chocolate egg cream candy called Suukko [Kiss] and black licorice Laku-Pekka [Licorice-Pekka], a card game of Musta-Pekka [Black-Pekka], and children’s stories and rhymes. To us, all of the above refer intertextually to the grotesque golliwog doll (Varga & Zug, 2013). The golliwog, originating in England as an image in a children’s picturebook by Florence and Bertha Upton in 1895, subsequently became a pervasive characterization of the African person around the world (Varga & Zug, 2013). The black male fairytale figure has long frizzy hair, pop eyes, and thick pink lips and wears a minstrel costume (white shirt, red pants, blue jacket) including white gloves and spats (Varga & Zug, 2013). The figure, considered to be racially insensitive, received increasing public criticism from the 1960s on and was eventually removed from the public view. As a consequence, the figure of an African on the licorice candy wrapper in Finland still reads to us as the golliwog despite the fact that it was reduced (see Genette, 1997b) into a plain black round form with abstracted curly ‘hair’ inside a red circle. The manufacturer of the Kiss

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candy tried to avoid the issue by removing any human-like reference from the wrapper. However, the two black exotic-looking human figures were still left kissing on the cover of the Kisses box. The golliwog also appears as an imitation (Genette, 1997b) in the children’s card game Musta-Pekka as a black male figure, as well as in the seemingly innocent and humorous pair of movie characters Pekka & Pätkä (1960s), the Finnish Stanley Laurel & Oliver Hardy, as a Vaudeville act. The figure golliwog others the African in Finnish children’s literature as well. The roots can be traced back to Aesop’s fable The Aethiop (Widger, 2008) which found its way, for instance, to a Finnish translation of Aisopoksen tarinoita [Aesop’s Fables] (Itkonen-Kaila, 1979). Similar texts appear in some of the stories and images by the Finnish illustrator and author Rudolf Koivu (Kemppinen, 1990) and by the author Kaarina Helakisa (1989). Textual condensations coloring children’s literature include the 1946 Ajattelematon neekeripoika [The Unthinking Negro Boy] (Rautio) and Emman matka neekerimaahan [Emma’s Travels into the Land of Negros] (Krohn, 1958) and Peppi Etelämerellä [Pippi in the South Seas] (Lindgren, 2005). Some of the images portrayed African child characters as quick-witted and clever. For instance, in Aarteiden kirja [The Book of Treasures] (Tynni, 1956a; 1965b) the clever boys in Bambo (pp. 16–25) and Pieni musta Sambo [Little Black Sambo] (pp. 106–110) outwit an alligator and tigers. Varga and Zug (2013) point out that the seemingly innocent imagery, specifically in children’s literature, carries a risk as it “does not turn racism on its head, but fortifies it by making it seemingly immune to criticism” (p. 667). Their study of embodied racism in children’s popular culture contends that African otherness to white purity evokes sensory perception and emotional responses as the golliwog never attains full humanness (p. 666). The variations on the tones of Otherness described above opened to us through Kristeva’s (1991) concept of a Foreigner. Counterparts for Alaska’s otherness in Little Woods ABC are found in Ninni, a girl character in Tove Jansson´s 1962 Moomin tale of Näkymätön lapsi [Invisible Child] and in the character of Elina in the 2002 Klaus Härö movie Näkymätön Elina [Invisible Elina]. Ninni is literally completely invisible except for a bell on her neck for having been treated badly by her aunt. Elina, a Finnish-speaking girl growing up in the Swedish-speaking Northern part of Finland, feels invisible owing to the staunch and mean schoolmistress who frowns on her being a Finn and hounds her for questioning her authority (see Kristeva, 1991, on the Stranger and the secret wound). Little by little both girls become visible: Ninni as she learns

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to trust the Moomin family, and Elina by standing her ground with the support of the children and a new teacher in her school. Elina accepts the Finnishness in herself. Ninni, having othered herself to escape being mistreated, feels safe enough to leave her Otherness behind. Magic Land ABC first others Finnishness and, in the end, seems to offer Finnishness as a refuge. We admit that the eclectic mélange of things global and local in both children’s and adults’ lifeworlds today is at times too busy and frantic. In adults, this may evoke a yearning for times and matters simpler and more straightforward, just as the nostalgic postcards by illustrators Martta Wendelin and Rudolf Koivu depict. Popular again in the 21st century, these images portray Finnishness and Finnish lifeworlds as they were represented in the 1930s and 1940s postcards and women’s magazines: steady and calm, home-religion-fatherland-centered and set among the bountiful fields, green birch trees and lakes. Curiously, these images are nearly completely void of men and any type of Otherness. Similar texts are present today in the melancholy Finnish tangos, waltzes, and other popular dance lyrics and melodies that tap directly into the Finnish cultural memory.

Discussion The digital environments of both ABC (e-)books (see Raikunen et al., 2013, and Wäre et al., 2013), while mimicking the books’ images and written texts, do offer some elements of play and discovery, albeit conservatively. This may be because the books were first published in 2006 and 2010 respectively. Although the digital sites provide teachers with extra pedagogical material to edutain, they tend to lag behind the speed of technological advancements. Many children today are keen, able, and creative users of digital platforms. As teachers ourselves, we believe that, given the opportunity and freedom to study on well-designed digital platforms, children learn by playing and often discover solutions on their own, in addition to teachers’ guidance. In spite of the shortcomings, these digital ABC sites do rightfully offer a good start for subjective and selfmotivated learning. By the time children start formal schooling and literacy studies they have already accumulated memories from their surrounding culture. They themselves may not be aware of collective cultural consciousness. However, teachers should be. Their role in the process of learning is to coach rather than teach and specifically to guide learners in critical reading, as, for instance, not perpetuating biases or stereotyping. Our study of ABC books shows that the fixed and pre-conceived schemas of

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Other/ness take on multiple meanings depending on times, places and cultural contexts. We believe that this intertextual method provides a structure to navigate among the fragmented information whatever the form it comes to us. The purpose of the method is to discover and explore traces as well as to produce untraceable rhizomes that link to cultural memory. Based on subjective interests, curiosity, and play, reading images intertextually is similar to research or problem solving. This promotes contextual, selfmotivated, and rhizomatic learning. Learners activate their motivation by formulating a question of interest to them. They research the problem as texts within its own context, within a genre, and proceed to explore the accumulated texts within the intercultural context. The fourth phase (artistic extension) would add to the learning by (re)mixing and creating new texts, interpretations, and plural meanings. This is how the method supports multiliteracies. Besides supporting subjective learning it can also be applied inter-subjectively as we, the researchers have done. The meanings we produced with the method within the Finnish context can be applied interculturally to discuss the varied Finnish cultural heritage (Paavola & Dervin, in this volume) to increase dialogue, awareness, and acceptance of diversities. Intertextual reading is challenging because texts are explored through multiple readings. We are fully aware that in intertextuality the signifying process is related to the limits of the subject, and, owing to the open-ended and rhizomatic nature of intertextuality, the (subjective) reading of the data is never final, nor is it complete—the same being true for each learner as well. We also wish to point out that careful age-appropriate planning is important when this method is applied in teaching. We agree with Paavola and Dervin (in this volume) that teachers need to be able to implement and teach critical reading skills. Only active, involved, and critical reading will bring about transformations in meaning-making processes and comprehension. This fosters awareness beyond the local into the global and provides a way to explore and understand plurality of meanings interculturally.

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Apple, M. (2008). Curriculum planning. Content, form and the politics of accountability. In F.M. Connelly (Ed.), The SAGE handbook of curriculum and instruction (pp. 25–44). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Apple, M., & Christian-Smith, L. (1991). The Politics of the textbook. In M.W. Apple & L. Christian-Smith (Eds.), The Politics of the textbook (pp. 1–21). New York, NY: Routledge. Bakhtin, M. (1998). Discourse in novel. In M. Holquist, (Ed.) The dialogic imagination. Four essays by M.M. Bakhtin (pp. 259–422). (C. Emerson, Trans). Austin, TX: University of Texas. Barthes, R. (1998). S/Z. (R. Miller, Trans.). New York, NY: Hill & Wang. Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. London, UK: Routledge. Callow, J. (2006). Images, politics and multiliteracies: Using a visual metalanguage. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 29(1), 7– 23. Carpenter, H., & Prichard, M. (1999). The Oxford companion to children’s literature. Oxford, UK: Oxford University. Colomer, T., Kümmerling-Meibauer, B., & Silva-Díaz, C. (Eds.) (2010). New directions in picturebook research. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. Crane, W. (1847). The absurd ABC. London: The Bodley Head. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. (B. Massumi, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Dervin, F. (2014). Discourses of othering. International encyclopedia of language and social interaction. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Retrieved from: http://blogs.helsinki.fi/dervin/files/2012/01/The-InternationalEncyclopedia-of-Language-and-Social-Interaction-Dervin.pdf Duncum, P. (2004). Visual culture isn’t just visual: Multiliteracy, multimodality and meaning. Studies in Art Education, 45(3), 252–264. ISSN: 00393541. Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE). (2014). Curriculum reform 2016. Retrieved from: http://oph.fi/english/education_development/ current_reforms/curriculum_reform_2016 Foster, S. (2011). Dominant traditions in international textbook research and revision. Education Inquiry 2(1), 5–20. Retrieved from: http://www.education inquiry.net/index.php/edui/article/view/21959 Foulds, K. (2013). The continua of identities in post-colonial curricula: Kenyan students’ perceptions of gender in school textbooks. International Journal of Educational development, 33(2), 165–174. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2012.03.005

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Gallén-Kallela, A. (1891). Aino Myth [Oil painting]. Helsinki: Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery. Genette, G. (1997a). Paratexts thresholds of interpretation. Literature, culture, theory 20. (J. Lewin, Trans.). New York, NY: Cambridge University. —. (1997b). Palimpsests. Literature in the second degree. (C. Newman & C. Doubinsky, Trans.). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Hannus, M. (1996). Oppikirjan kuvitus koriste vai ymmärtämisen apu. Turku, Finland: University of Turku. Holliday, A. (2010). Cultural descriptions as political cultural acts: an exploration. Language and Intercultural Communication, 10(3), 259– 272. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14708470903348572 Howarth, C. (2002). Identity in whose eyes? The role of representations in identity construction. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 32(2), 145–162. DOI: 10.1111/1468-5914.00181 Helakisa, K. (1989). Pilviäidin perilliset. Kaarina Helakisa. Satuja vuosilta 1959–1989 (Illus. O. Markkanen). Helsinki, Finland: Otava. Hälinen, K. (Ed.) (1951). Suomen lasten aapinen (Illus. R. Koivu). Porvoo, Finland: WSOY. Härö, K. (Director), and Kinoproduction Oy FilmLance International AB (Producer) (2002). Näkymätön Elina. [Elina: As If I Wasn’t There.] [Motion picture]. Finland/Sweden. Kotkaheimo, L. (1989). Suomalaisen aapisen viisi vuosisataa. Aapisten sisältö ja tehtävät kansanopetuksessa. Joensuu, Finland: Joensuun yliopisto. Itkonen-Kaila, M. (Ed. and trans.) (1979). Aisopoksen tarinoita. Helsinki, Finland: Otava. Jansson, T. (1962). Näkymätön lapsi. In Näkymätön lapsi ja muita kertomuksia. (L. Järvinen, Trans.) Helsinki, Finland: WSOY. Kallioniemi, T. & Roikonen, J. (2013). Reuhurinne. Keuruu, Finland: Otava. Kemppinen, M. (Ed.), & Koivu, R. (Author and illust.) (1990). Rudolf Koivun satukirja. Helsinki, Finland: Otava. Knuuttila, S., Kääriäinen, H., Turunen, M., & Voutilainen, T. (1967). Aapinen. Tapiola, Finland: Weilin+Göös. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. New York, NY: Routledge. Kristeva, J. (1984). Revolution in poetic language. (M. Waller, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University. —. (1991). Strangers to ourselves. (L. S. Roudiez, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University.

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—. (1993). Nations without nationalism. (L. S. Roudiez, Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University. Krohn, H. (1958). Emman matka neekerimaahan. In H. Krohn (Ed.), Satukontti. Satuja Suomen lapsille (Illus. H. Honkanen) (pp. 44–51). Helsinki, Finland: Otava. Kuivasmäki, R. (1990). Siiwollisuuden tuntoa ja ylewätä kauneuden mieltä – Suomenkielinen nuorisokirjallisuus 1851–1899. Jyväskylä, Finland: Jyväskylän yliopisto. Lindgren, A.(2005). Peppi Etelämerellä (Illus. I. Nyman). (L. Järvinen, Trans.). Helsinki, Finland: WSOY. Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Rethinking pedagogical practices in early childhood education: A multidimensional approach to learning and inclusion (pp. 14–32). In N. Yelland (Ed.), Contemporary perspectives on early childhood education. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press. Lähdesmäki, M. (1995). [Photo]. In Me naiset. Advertisement by Hasan & Partners. Retrieved from: http://kalevalataidettakouluille.ateneum.fi/pdf/aino.pdf Nikolajeva, M. & Scott, C. (2000). How picturebooks work. New York, NY: Garland publishing. Makkonen, A. (1991). Onko intertekstuaalisuudella mitään rajaa? In A. Viikari (Ed.), Intertekstuaalisuus, suuntia ja sovelluksia (pp. 9–30). Tietolipas 121. Helsinki, Finland: SKS Osberg, D., & Biesta, G. (2010). The end/s of school: complexity and the conundrum of the inclusive educational curriculum. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14(6), 593–607. DOI: 10.1080/13603110802530684 O’Sullivan, E. (2009). S is for Spaniard. European Journal of English Studies, 13(3), 333–349. DOI: 10.1080/13825570903223517 Paatela-Nieminen, M. (2000). On the threshold of intercultural Alices. Intertextual research on the illustrations of the English Alice in Wonderland and the German Alice in Wonderland in intermedia research in the field of art education. Doctoral thesis. University publication series A 29. Helsinki, Finland: Aalto University. —. (2008). Intertextual method for art education applied in Japanese paper theatre – a study on discovering intercultural differences. The International Journal of Art & Design Education, 27(1), 91–104. Paatela-Nieminen, M., Itkonen, T. & Talib, M. (forthcoming). Reconstructing Imagined Finnishness: The case of art education through the concept of place. The International Journal of Art & Design Education.

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Pesonen, J. (2013). Anti-racist strategies in Finnish children’s literature: Physical appearance and language as signifiers of national belonging. Children’s Literature in Education, 44, 238–250. DOI 10.1007/s10583-012-9186-z Poyas, Y. & Eilam, B. (2012). Construction of common interpretive spaces through intertextual loops: How teachers interpret multimodal learning materials. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(1), 89–100. DOI: 10.1016/j.tate.2011.08.002 Prasad, A. (Ed.). (2003). Postcolonial theory and organizational analysis. A critical engagement. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Raikunen, S., Leino, K. & Saramäki, S. (Illust.) (2013). Taikamaan aapinen [Magic Land ABC].1st to 5th edition. Helsinki, Finland: Otava. http://www.otava.fi/oppimateriaalit/luokat1-6/taikamaa/ Rautio, J. (1946). Ajattelematon neekeripoika. In J. Rautio (Ed.), Taikapallo ja muita satuja ja tarinoita (pp. 27–33). Hämeenlinna, Finland: Arvi A. Karisto. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Serafini, F. (2010). Reading multimodal texts: Perceptual, structural and ideological perspectives. Children’s Literature in Education, 41(2), 85–104. DOI:10.1007/s10583-010-9100-5 Seuss, Dr. (1963). Dr. Seuss’s ABC book. New York, NY: Beginner books. Silvey, A. (Ed.) (2002). The essential guide to children’s books and their creators. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Smith, A. (2006). Paddington Bear: A case study of immigration and otherness. Children’s Literature in Education, 37(1), 35–50. DOI: 10.1007/s10583-005-9453-3 Talouselämä. (2014, October 30). Aapinen tekee puiden kaatamisesta pahan teon – “Ei ollut tarkoitus”. Retrieved from: http://www.talouselama.fi/uutiset/aapinen+tekee+puiden+kaatamisesta +pahan+teon++ei+ollut+tarkoitus/a2005409 Tynni, A. & Haavio, M. (1968). Intiaanitarina. In A. Tynni & M. Haavio (Eds.), Kultaiset aapissadut (Illus. M. Karma) (pp. 5–7). Porvoo, Finland: WSOY. Tynni, A. (1955). Satuaapinen. Helsinki, Finland: WSOY. —. (1956a). Bambo. In K. Kunnas Aarteiden kirja. Kerro äiti II (pp. 16– 25). Helsinki, Finland: WSOY. —. (1956b). Pieni musta Sambo. In K. Kunnas Aarteiden kirja. Kerro äiti II (pp. 106–110). Helsinki, Finland: WSOY. Unknown (191?). Lasten koti-Aapinen. [Helsinki, Finland]: Lilius and Hertzberg.

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Varga, D. & Zug, R. (2013). Golliwogs and teddy bears: Embodied racism in children’s popular culture. The Journal of Popular Culture, 46(3), 647–671. DOI: 10.1111/jpcu.12042 Walsh, M. (2006). The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 29(1), 2006, 24–37. Widger, D. (2008). The Aethiop. In The project Gutenberg ebook of Aesop’s fables, by Aesop. (G. Townsend, Trans.). Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21/21-h/21-h.htm Wäre, M., Lerkkanen, M.-K., Suonranta-Hollo, L., Korolainen, T. Parkkinen, J., Kirkkopelto, K., Ketonen, R. ja Sanoma Pro. (2013). Pikkumetsän aapinen [Little Woods ABC]. 1.–9. edition. Helsinki, Finland: Sanoma Pro. https://sanomapro.fi/opetus-ja-opiskelu/oppimisymparisto, https://sanomapro.fi/pikkumetsan-aapinen-ja-lukukirja



CHAPTER THREE PERFORMING GENDER AND AGENCY IN HOME ECONOMICS TEXTBOOK IMAGES SONJA ANTTILA, JOUNI LESKINEN, HANNA POSTI-AHOKAS AND HILLE JANHONEN-ABRUQUAH

Abstract Contemporary society, characterised by multifarious gender realities and diverse family and household compositions, challenges the traditional division of household work into female and male activities. The role of Home Economics education, particularly the textbooks used in compulsory Home Economics courses in Finnish basic education, is analysed in order to understand whether the textbooks—specifically their images— strengthen the normative and dichotomised gender perspective, or whether they can open avenues for a wider perception of gender in the context of household activities in the everyday life of families. Images in Home Economics textbooks were analysed to depict how gender and agency are performed in them. A total of 304 images from six textbooks currently used in Finnish schools were analysed through quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The analysis framework was built on Butler’s (2004) idea of gender performativity. The analysis focused on 1) how gender is performed in the images and 2) how the images portray gendered agency in a Home Economics setting. The findings suggest that the textbook images repeat and reinforce the binary, heteronormative conception of gender and family models. Men and women are seen to complement each other. Women and girls are more often present in the images, and they perform a wider variety of domestic activities than men and boys. Families are portrayed as nuclear families including a mother, a father and children. Agency is performed within pre-determined, normative gender positions.

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The analyses also reveal that gender equality in the Home Economics textbook images takes place within the unquestionable categories of male and female. The findings therefore suggest that any gender equality effects attributed to the compulsory Home Economics education in Finland can only be partially realised unless more attention is paid to diversity in performing gender in the curriculum and the learning materials used.

Introduction This study provides a critical analysis of the performance of gender in Home Economics textbooks used in Finnish comprehensive schools. Previous studies of Finnish school practices and learning materials suggest that sexuality, gender and family are often performed within limited categories (Lehtonen, Palmu, & Lahelma, 2014; Tainio, 2012). In addition, Home Economics is a subject that is generally seen as connected to the domestic, feminine spheres of home and family (e.g. Österlund, 2010). Textbooks are key learning tools in comprehensive education (Tainio, 2012), and the images in textbooks are essential in the development of visual literacy (Seppänen, 2004). This study focuses on analysing the images in Home Economics textbooks used in compulsory Home Economics courses in basic education where pupils are 13 to 16 years old. The images are analysed in order to understand whether they strengthen the normative gender positions or if they can open avenues for a wider understanding of gender and agency in relation to household activities in the everyday life of families. According to Sleeter and Grant (2011, p. 186), textbooks—as the major conveyors of the curriculum in the US context—are representative of the struggle for power between different social groups in society. Curricular materials can be seen to project images of society and culture, but the validity of such images and the inequalities represented in them is often hidden (Ibid.). Although the role of textbooks varies between contexts and school subjects, skilful and critical use of learning materials is an essential part of teachers’ professionalism. Alemanji, Johnson Longfor and Óskarsdóttir (this volume) suggest that teachers can and should be selective of how to use learning materials. Furthermore, Itkonen and Paatela-Nieminen (this volume) discuss the pedagogical demands put on teachers to expand their repertoires of interaction among (extended) texts, critical reading and interpretive meaning-making skills. Textbooks form an essential part of teaching and education in general, and gender is an aspect that inevitably is represented in learning materials. The way gender is portrayed in these materials has an influence on how

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pupils perceive gender. Earlier studies (e.g. Lahelma, 1992; Palmu, 2003; Táboas-Pais & Rey-Cao, 2012; Tainio, 2012) suggest that learning materials and school practices seem to maintain and reinforce the traditional view of gender. Furthermore, gender positions present in learning materials remain internally homogenous and heteronormative (Lehtonen et al., 2014; Ojala, Palmu, & Saarinen, 2009; Táboas-Pais & Rey-Cao, 2012). In relation to Home Economics education and its learning materials, the gender aspect is relevant in terms of how and to what degree the materials portray boys, girls, men and women as gendered agents in Home Economics settings. Home Economics as a school subject could play a major role in reducing gender segregation, both between and within the genders. In fact, promoting gender equality is one of the goals of Home Economics education (Finnish National Board of Education, henceforth FNBE, 2004). Gender bias in textbooks and curricula has been of interest to researchers in different parts of the world since the 1970s. Gender bias has been seen as one of the obstacles—often well camouflaged—to achieving gender equality in education (e.g. Blumberg, 2008). A meta-analysis of international textbook studies by Blumberg (2008) showed a uniform pattern of females being underrepresented in the text and in the proportion of named characters. Furthermore, both genders were shown in highly gender-stereotyped ways in the household, in the occupational division of labour and in the portrayed actions, attitudes and traits. In the same study, the Nordic countries, particularly Sweden, were presented as the best ‘bias-busters’ in the area of gender and textbooks. A study of 51 Finnish textbooks used in three subjects (Tainio, 2012) revealed a gender bias via the higher presence of masculine characters in their images and in the number of words referring to boys, men and masculine features. However, although the bias was systematic across the data, the authors argue that the books still provided opportunities for the teachers to question gendered practices and take equality into account in their teaching (Ibid.). Thus, teachers’ critical literacy skills, as argued by Paavola and Dervin (this volume), are of great importance in the pursuit of a discourse on gender when learning materials are introduced to pupils. As there has been some indication that the intensity of gender bias in textbooks is slowly diminishing, less research attention has been given to gender bias in textbooks more recently. Drawing on previous studies of European textbooks (Eilard, 2004; Good, Woodzicka, & Wingfield, 2010; Táboas-Pais & Rey-Cao, 2012), this study contributes to the research literature on gender bias in textbook images from the perspective of Home

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Economics education. The focus solely on images, and not for example on illustrations and text combined, has been chosen to draw attention to the importance of illustrations. Textbooks are important tools for improving visual literacy (Seppänen, 2005). According to Seppänen (2004, p. 148), visual literacy refers to one’s ability to understand visual orders and their embedded cultural meanings, as well as to follow the historical order of visuality, meanings of power structures and alternative ways of order. The draft of the new national curriculum (FNBE, 2014) that will be implemented in 2016 also puts more emphasis on multi-literacy skills. Therefore, the power of illustrations should be understood more clearly.

Gender, Education and Home Economics In common sense understanding, people tend to be too sure what gender is (e.g. DePalma, 2013). Drawing on Butler (1990), DePalma (2013) argues that engaging children in discussions on gender relations requires an understanding of how we define, recognise and regulate people’s bodies and actions into two genders. According to Heinämaa (2012), viewing gender as a stylistic phenomenon enables us to see gender in a new light. A style is not restricted by physical, mental or cultural boundaries but intersects them. Thus, as a style, gender is no longer a stable bodily or mental substance but an open and dynamic entity. Accordingly, style is not a matter of what we are but how we are: the way to be in the world (Heinämaa, 2012). Furthermore, viewing gender as a style leaves room for variation and enables us to also recognise ways to be in the world that are located somewhere between the feminine and masculine ways of being (Ibid.). For instance, in school, pupils who challenge the heteronormative gender positions of boys and girls could be seen as creators of new styles. According to Heinämaa (2012), Butler’s (1990, 2004) notion of gender performativity can be understood as a bodily style that is produced through the acts of an individual. It is, however, important to understand that gender is not a performance in the sense of a theatrical performance. Therefore, gender cannot be understood as a role (Butler, 1990, p. 25). Gender is constituted in everyday actions including both physical actions and speech. It is constructed as a result of the performativity; there is no inner core gender that would cause an individual to perform in a particular way (Butler, 1990). Furthermore, gender is always influenced by the social norms and practices of a particular culture. We never do gender in isolation or just for ourselves but together and for others. Thus, gender always needs to be viewed from a relational perspective (Butler, 2004).

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Syrjäläinen and Kujala (2010) argued that the idea of equality between the genders often remains a mere pronounced goal that is not actualised in the everyday life of schools. In a teacher’s work, it is important to take aspects of gender diversity into consideration and to be aware of unconscious factors that influence the way that different genders are treated. At worst, a situation where gender is not taken into consideration can prevent teachers from recognising the diversity amongst their pupils (Ibid). Compared to gender diversity, sexual diversity is an even more suppressed matter. The main reason for this is the power that the heteronormative ideal still wields within contemporary society. Heteronormativity upholds the dichotomised division of gender between men and women. Furthermore, the school as an institution seems to reinforce the heteronormative ideal, and both pupils and teachers are assumed to adopt it (Lehtonen et al., 2014). Individuals that challenge heteronormativity make the distinction very visible at schools (Ibid.). Teachers need the knowledge, skills and the will to face pupils in an equal and professional way. The new, forthcoming Finnish national curriculum (FNBE, 2014) clearly outlines its approach to gender and gender equality. It encourages both boys and girls to learn various subjects and provides information and understanding of variety in gender positions. According to the curriculum, each pupil should be encouraged to find a personal learning path free from predominant gender positions (FNBE, 2014). In the practices of Home Economics education, much of the actual learning depends on how the teacher introduces the activities—ideally as ones that everyone can do. Pupils’ background, home culture and learned behaviours in taking part in household activities are particularly important to take into account in Home Economics education (see Venäläinen, 2010).

Gender in the Home Economics Context Agency, defined as a dialogue between the agent and the norms and the expectations of society (Ojanen, 2011, p. 39), is analysed here in relation to gender. As a social category, gender gives meaning and directs, enables or restricts agency (Ojala et al., 2009, p. 16). The way gender influences agency has to do with how individuals identify themselves with the cultural representations of gender. Agency is not, however, completely restricted and directed by the cultural representations but is based on negotiations with the representations (Rossi, 2010). To be able to question the cultural representations of gender, the agent needs to reflect on his or her own actions and to be aware of gendered practices in society. For

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instance, a ‘woman’s activity’ of washing the dishes and taking care of the children just because that is the custom (Jokinen, 2009) is in contrast with the gender equality discourse in relation to dividing household work equally. Therefore, it is important that the discourse is taken into action. In Butlerian terms, the possibilities invested in agency consist of the alteration of performativity to create new ways of being in the world (Butler, 2006). The realisation of one’s agency is the result of a negotiation between the individual and the socially constructed, structural pressure (Rossi, 2010). In this study, agency is viewed in relation to gendered power structures and dynamics within society, particularly in families and within school. The socially constructed categories, including gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social class and age, direct and restrict agency and often also lead to strict, unnecessary categorisations (Ibid.). In this study, we focus on analysing agency in relation to gender and sexuality in the textbook images portraying men, women, boys and girls. The purpose is to analyse how agency is reflected in the visual images of textbooks.

Gendered Household Practices Everyday life deals with the gendered division of labour both culturally and practically (Jokinen, 2009). Lewin-Epstein, Stier, and Braun (2006, p. 1149) argue that the division of household work reproduces gender as a social category rather than as a subjective experience. The gendered division of labour, based on heteronormativity, is strongly manifested in the allocation of household work (Jokinen, 2009). Different household tasks are referred to as men’s work and women’s work (Miettinen, 2008). In the heteronormative approach, men and women are seen as needing and complementing each other, as well as acting in a male or a female way. Jokinen (2009) suggests that this idea is commonly accepted in society, and thus it has become a matter of virtue and naturalness. Ojanen (2011, pp. 11–12) argued that the dichotomous acknowledgement of only two genders is the result of the pervasive heteronormativity in society. However, in contemporary society, where family forms are more diverse, the built-in assumption of heteronormativity should be questioned. For instance, in same-sex couples, it appears biased per se to speak of household work in terms of men’s work or women’s work (Nardi, 2000). This calls for a critical approach to gender norms. According to Butler (2006, pp. 234–235), gender should be seen as a set of constantly repeated performative acts that change from situation to situation. Rather, it should be regarded as a continuum where gender is performed in a variety of

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ways. A more flexible way of performing gender is possible, as certain types of agency are not restricted to a particular gender (Ibid., pp. 195–196 & 241). Finally, it should be recognised that gender has versatile forms, which makes it very difficult to attribute meaning to (Kimmel, Hearn, & Connell, 2005). This raises the question of how and to what degree gender can be used to explain human behaviour and its meanings in the first place. For instance, research has many unanswered questions considering the relationship between gender and household work (Coltrane & Shih, 2010).

Gender in Home Economics Education The main objectives of Home Economics education include developing pupils’ skills in cooperation, information acquisition and the practical work required to manage daily living (FNBE, 2004). The education focuses on four core components: family and living together, nutrition and the culture of food, the consumer and a changing society, and the home and environment (Ibid.). Home Economics education deals with the basic matters of the pupils’ everyday life and aims at supporting pupils in their personal growth and development. The education involves attitudes and emotions alongside knowledge and skills (Turkki, 2009, p. 104). Thus, Home Economics education could be a potential context to apply multifaceted gender views. Since the introduction of the Finnish nine-year comprehensive school in the 1970s, Home Economics education has been given to 13- to 16year-old pupils in grades 7, 8 and 9. In grade 7, Home Economics is a compulsory subject for all, while in grades 8 and 9, it is one of the most popular optional subjects. Pupils are instructed in mixed groups of both girls and boys (Finland Overview, Curricula and Qualifications.). In addition to the national curriculum, municipalities and schools formulate more specific curricula. The forthcoming 2016 Home Economics curriculum focuses on three competence areas: food and culinary skills, consumer skills and living together (FNBE, 2014). Boys’ agency in Home Economics education is often restricted by the fact that girls and women are culturally allowed to take part in activities considered masculine, whereas boys and men do not have the same freedom in activities classified as feminine (Österlund, 2010). Gender equality in Home Economics education has been problematized for instance in a Swedish classroom study (Pettersson, 2007). Home Economics classes have traditionally had a strong female genderisation, but there is at the same time a definite striving toward gender equality

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(Pettersson, 2007, pp. 25–27). The author studied how gender orders were (re)created in the context of home and consumer studies. According to Pettersson, the pupils performed gender in order to negotiate their biological sex. They consciously or unconsciously changed their behaviour in response to an action or interaction as a means of adapting to a specific context. Pettersson (2007, p. 203) named four hyper characters—Clown, Marionette, Prudorderly and Wallpaper Flower—to represent different gender orders adopted by the pupils. A Clown had to make fun out of his/her performance, whereas a Marionette did what others asked for without her/his own thinking. Prudorderly worked neatly by following all of the possible rules, and Wallpaper Flower acted properly without needing others to pay attention to him/her. Pettersson (2007) argued that acting through these characters is an even wider concept than Butler’s (1990) gender performativity, as it represents the change of gender order in different contexts and situations.

Analysing Gender in Home Economics Textbook Images The images analysed for this study were drawn from six Home Economics textbooks published between 2004 and 20121. All of the books are currently being used in grade 7 Home Economics courses in Finland. The data corpus consisted of all the textbook images including human characters (N = 304) that were present in the six textbooks. Content analysis that encompasses both quantitative and qualitative characteristics (Silverman, 2006; Wolff, 2007) was applied to the analysis of the images. According to Seppänen (2005, p. 145), images can be categorized, and thus quantified, based on qualitative determinations of the image contents. Due to this study’s focus on gendered agency and gender equality, the number of male and female characters in the images was calculated. Of the 839 human characters portrayed in the images, 51% were feminine, 45% were masculine and 4% were other (unclassified, small babies, people in the background, etc.). Generally, the division of the characters to masculine and feminine was relatively unproblematic. No significant differences were found when dividing the characters into adults and children (under 18). These quantifications suggest that, on a superficial level, both genders and different age groups are evenly portrayed in the images.

 1

As the textbook writing process can take several years and new editions can be printed without changing the images, it is estimated that the images analysed were up to 10–15 years old at the time of analysis.

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Table 1: Division of human characters present in the images according to gender and age (N = 839) Feminine Women n % 192 23 Total feminine

Masculine Girls n % 232 28 424 51%

Men n % 179 21 Total masculine

Other Boys n % 200 24 379 45%

Adults n % 12 1 Total other

Children n % 24 3 36 4%

What was notable beyond these categorisations was the marginal number of human characters that were old, disabled or of visibly different cultural origins. It was also noted that couples portrayed were only male/female couples and that families were nuclear families. The images included both photographs and drawings. The only remarkable difference between the different types of images was the absence of humour and overweight persons in the photographs. The people portrayed in the photographs looked happy and healthy, even slimmer than average, whereas some drawings included untidy people, humorous attitudes to housework or people with seemingly unhealthy habits. Some of these humorous drawings illustrated men cleaning. It was done in the same manner as Pettersson (2007) described the boys acting as Clowns in a Home Economics classroom. The humorous Clown position gave men and boys a way to enter the feminine sphere of domestic work. The quantitative analysis of the presence of masculine and feminine characters of different ages and of the activities they were involved in laid the foundation for further qualitative analysis focusing on the performance of gender in the images. Drawing on Kinnunen (2010) and Harjunen (2010), an analysis of the gendered appearance of human characters was conducted. The analysis of gendered agency started with written descriptions of each image. For example, one such description stated, “A woman writes an etiquette sticker on a plastic container. There are several containers and a basket full of blueberries. There is also a boy in the image”. Another example states, “A man sits in a barber’s chair and is getting a haircut”. Then the activity was characterised for example as “household work” or “consumer service”. Based on these descriptions, a qualitative analysis of agency was conducted to better understand some specific issues drawn from the data. The major part of the analysis was conducted by the first author. Collaborative qualitative analysis was conducted among the four researchers to discuss and agree on the classifications and to further focus

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the analysis of the images on three themes including 1) performance of gender, 2) gendered agency in home economics contexts and 3) representation of families. The team selected example images of the three themes that stimulated interest and created grounds for multiple interpretations of gender. An awareness of the influence of each researcher’s tacit knowledge on the analysis (Silverman, 2006) was maintained throughout, and the collaborative analysis was thus used to verify the previous analysis and to discuss the data from various perspectives.

Performance of Gender in the Images The human body is marked by feminine and masculine features throughout the world, but the way that appearance is defined as feminine or masculine varies according to cultural settings (Kinnunen, 2010, p. 227). Here, we focus on describing the gender markers that have been identified as characteristic in the Finnish context. Clothing is assumed to tell the truth about one’s gender, and appearance carries different gender features and norms, such as women wearing dresses or men having a moustache (Tainio, 2012; Vänskä, 2011). Boys and men wearing pink, lace or a skirt raises the question of one’s masculinity, whereas girls are allowed to dress almost in an androgynous manner (Vänskä, 2011). Colours in clothing show the gender division, especially among teenagers. Blue, grey, brown, green and black are seen as male colours, whereas red, pink and purple are not. Women’s clothing does not have similar restrictions as does men’s clothing (Tolonen, 2001, p. 189). Being young, slender and sportive are seen as positive characteristics for both men and women, but many other features are determined by gender (Kinnunen, 2010, p. 232). For women, being small, slim and fit are seen as favourable characteristics—big men can be seen as convivial, but women ought to be smaller (Harjunen, 2010, p. 241). In the textbook images analysed for this study, girls had their long hair open or tied in a ponytail. Only girls had braided hair or ponytails. Only girls wore high heels, tiny tops with shoulder strings, fitted t-shirts showing a bra underneath, head-scarves and dresses. Girls had make-up on, and in general their clothes were tighter and showed more bare skin than did clothes worn by boys. Grown-up women wore feminine clothes, colours and accessories, and in the drawings, the female figure was visible. The female beauty ideal (Kinnunen, 2010) is seen as fatless, having reasonable muscles and ample bosom. These are of course contradictory

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and not realistic (Ibid.). In schools, the same beauty ideal applies to female students (Tolonen, 2001, p. 183). Boys, on the other hand, had a short haircut, slim body structure and loose clothing. Brown-, green- and especially blue-coloured clothes were used. Boys wore boxers, shirts with a collar, pleated trousers, caps, ties, shorts or sneakers. A picture of a bare-chested boy was shown twice. According to Tolonen (2001), teenage boys are measured especially in relation to how they can defend themselves, how sportive they are and how they relate to girls. The male characters had short haircuts, were big in size, had beards, moustaches, bald heads or buzz hair-cuts, thick eyebrows and a rectangular body shape. According to Harjunen (2010), the male body is measured according to its functionality, capacity and strength. The socially accepted male body is strong, muscular and big (Ibid.). The stereotypical gender norms were not really broken, as both the female and male figures in the data were described as following typical western female and male ideals (e.g. Vänskä, 2010). Female figures often had long hair or shoulder-length hair, and male figures had short hair. Even though female figures were portrayed as skinny, they had big breasts. Male figures were well-built. In the data, there were only two images where a girl had a short haircut. Girls had a wider variety of clothing. They wore trousers both in photographs and drawings. As a rule, boys had short hair. There was one exception to this: in one drawing a boy had long blond hair. Boys’ clothing followed a similar style in all books. Only in two pictures was a boy wearing a red shirt, and in one of the drawings, a boy had an apron with a ruffle. Boys that could be seen as petite or slender numbered only two. The length of hair was an important marker of gender/sex among the adults. Short-haired female figures numbered only four, and three of them had other feminine features either in their clothing or appearance. There was only one male figure with long hair, and this was in a group image where all were very small. Only one figure was classified in the group “other” as it had both feminine and masculine characteristics evenly. This character was shovelling snow, so, due to thick winter clothing, it was not possible to classify whether the character was male or female. Sometimes a person’s nature, talents and skills are evaluated according to their appearance (Tainio, 2012). In particular, the female appearance is evaluated according to cultural and aesthetic norms (Harjunen, 2010, p. 241). Defining people continuously based only on their bodily appearance can make the line between reality and false assumptions vague. However, Tainio (2012) argued that the norms defining appearance as feminine or

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masculine play an important role in Finnish schools. As a biased representation of gender can start fulfilling itself and lead to distortion of one’s self-image (Harjunen, 2010, p. 242), it is important to consider how gender is portrayed in textbook images. For example, portraying people whose sex cannot be clearly defined, who are overweight, who are visibly disabled or who are dressed in an unconventional manner could open up opportunities to discuss and question the prevailing norms regarding appearance.

Gendered Agency in the Images The qualitative content analysis of the images suggests that gender is portrayed differently in the images placed in the school context than in the ones portraying professional and family spheres. In the images portraying young people, particularly secondary school pupils in Home Economics classrooms, the activities are evenly distributed between genders. Images often portray a boy and a girl working as a pair or an even number of girls and boys working together. This corresponds with the realities of Home Economics classrooms in Finnish secondary schools, where girls and boys are taught together. Therefore, in the classroom context, rather than focusing the gender analysis according to the dichotomous divide between boys and girls, Pettersson’s (2007) characterisations of the Clown, Marionette, Prudorderly and Wallpaper Flower may provide better opportunities for a multidimensional analysis of performing gender in the classroom. Although the gender representations of the images showing school settings are in accordance with the equality ideals of Home Economics education, we noted that the images set in out-of-school contexts portray gender in ways that are more traditional. For the purpose of this study, it is relevant to focus on how gender is performed in the images placed in other home economics contexts, including home, family and work, where classroom learning ought to be bridged. First, we found that in the images illustrating young people’s healthy lifestyles and sports, boys are engaged in team sports while girls exercise individually. Second, females are more often engaged in domestic work, whereas men are portrayed as professionals (e.g. chefs). Third, in family images, families are portrayed as nuclear families, and family members are often gathered around a meal. To analyse gendered agency in more detail, four examples of images (sources named at the end of chapter) focusing on 1) performance of femininity, 2) professional and domestic agency and 3) performance of

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gender in a family context are presented and discussed in relation to relevant literature. Example 1: Performing femininity Description of paired images on cleaning work: The first image depicts two women. Both women are cleaning or about to start it. One of the women is wearing a red shirt, an apron with a checked pattern, black leggings and black slippers. The woman has her hair tied up with a ribbon in a bow. She is cleaning the toilet seat and the wall mirror simultaneously, with one hand spraying detergent on the seat and the other wiping the mirror. In addition, the woman has a mop under her right arm. The water bucket is about to fall, and there is already some water on the floor. The woman looks busy and stressed, with sweat drops around her head. She is standing in a curved position that does not look very ergonomic. The other woman is wearing a green shirt, a white apron with green stripes, blue trousers and blue shoes. In contrast to the first woman, this woman has shorter hair. She is smiling and holding her index finger on her cheek, which gives the impression of her planning to start to hoover and looking forward to it. The woman is standing in an upright posture and holding the handle of the vacuum cleaner in her right hand. There is no furniture or anything else in the image beside the woman and the vacuum cleaner. In these paired images of cleaning work (Example 1), attention is first drawn either to the looks or to the actions of the two female characters. In this example, the looks and actions are evidently interconnected: the two women are each other’s opposites in terms of looks and actions. The drawing could be characterised by dichotomies of order/disorder, cleanliness/messiness, morality/immorality and decency/indecency. The green colour is used in the clothes of the orderly woman, while the disordered woman is wearing red. According to Tamminen (2013), the colour green is often connected to male clothing, whereas red is seen as a female colour (Tamminen, 2013). The pairing of these two women in Example 1 seems to clearly point to the ideal of a decent, moral and ordered woman (Käyhkö, 2006). On the other hand, the woman with long, curly hair and red colour on her cheeks could also represent the ideal feminine look and the expectation that a woman is supposed to be beautiful to look at (Rossi, 2010). The other woman is dressed in more masculine colours (Vänskä, 2011), and her hairstyle seems practical. Looking natural, decent and clean, the woman’s looks do not invite attention or feminine associations (Käyhkö,

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2006). This resembles how Pettersson (2007) described how the Prudorderly character would be acting in a Home Economics classroom. The woman on the right is smiling and does not seem to mind the cleaning work. This may indicate ‘bodily naturality’ (Jokinen, 2009) of woman as a caretaker. In contrast, the other woman seems stressed, and she may not be used to doing much housework. These images can be interpreted as controlling female looks and behaviour, which in turn reproduces gendered order (Käyhkö, 2006). An alternative interpretation would be to consider the two women as a couple. This would orient interpretation of the images toward a couple’s complementary dynamics and division of household work. Alternatively, the images can be interpreted beyond the gendered agency. The woman in red may depict the more realistic daily situation in which one ought to manage multiple tasks simultaneously due to the limited time available for performing household work. In contrast, the woman in green is an example of a person who has more time and is thus able to schedule cleaning work and to perform tasks in an orderly manner. As shown by this analysis, these simplified drawings show how difficult it is to depict for whom cleaning work is ‘natural’ and the kind of looks that are connected to an orderly activity. In Home Economics education, it would be more important to leave students with a message that all kinds of people can be active agents in their own individual ways. The presence of professional male chefs and bakers was notable in the images (Example 2). The analysed images included four images portraying one or several male chefs and one image with a male baker. No female chefs or bakers were present. Other male professionals portrayed included a charcuterist, a customer servant, a waiter, a (flea) market seller and a garbage collector. Professional females portrayed included a (flea) market seller, a charcuterist, a catering worker and a Home Economics teacher.

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Examples 2 (left) and 3 (right): ( Profeessional men,, domestic wo omen

In generral, the agencyy of women was w strongly linked to the domestic sphere (27 im mages). Wom men were portrrayed with ressponsibilities related to food managgement and childcare sig gnificantly m more often th han men. Women werre cleaning windows, doing g the dishes, w washing carpeets, doing grocery shoppping, bakingg, berry pickin ng, ironing, prreserving, coo oking and taking care of children. Twelve imag ges portrayedd men doing domestic work includding vacuum ming, window cleaning, raaking, shoe polishing, p sweeping, chhildcare and grocery g shopp ping. Female ccharacters were clearly working in ddomestic spacces (Example 3) whereas thhe male characcters were portrayed inn semi-professsional settin ngs, e.g. a m man dressed in a suit carrying a chhild or a man dressed in a military m uniforrm polishing his h shoes. These im mages (Exampples 2 and 3)) correspond to the recent time-use statistics (O Official Statisttics Finland, 2009) indicaating that wo omen still spend signifficantly more time on houseehold chores tthan men, alth hough the time differennce has diminnished within the past decaade. Research h has also shown that women tend to be respon nsible for rouutine tasks, while w men focus on teemporary taskks. Women preparing p the dinners on weekdays w while men barbeque on the weekend d are examplles of the division of responsibilitties for meal preparation (Pipping, Eksström, & Hjäälmeskog, 2006). Pictuures portrayiing life outsiide the hom me, such as shopping, s provided a m more equal seetting for males and femalles. People accting in a consumer’s role were more m equal than t people pperforming household h duties. Thiss, of course, is i an opportun nity to discusss why the pu ublic and domestic gender roles seeem so differen nt from each oother.

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Reprresentation ns of Familiies Example 4: Family

Examplee 4 displays thhe dominant way w to presennt the nuclear family as the normative family form. An imag ge where a fa family, consisting of a different-sexx couple with a young child d, is having diinner at homee has been chosen to poortray the eveeryday life of a family. In tthe data, all tw wo-parent nuclear famiilies portrayedd a mother, a father f and a chhild or childreen. In one image, the mother receivved a Motherrs’ Day conggratulations frrom three children. Ass the father is absent from the t picture, it could be interrpreted as a single-parent family. Also, A an imagee where a mann is with a teenager or where anothher man carriies a child on n his back couuld illustrate a singleparent famiily. It is posssible that so ome of the same-sex youth pairs presented ass working toggether could illustrate same--sex couples, but other features in thhese portrayalls do not supp port this interppretation. The imagges portrayingg families give rise to the fuundamental an nd topical question: whhat is a familly? Family diiscourse is coonstantly searrching for the original,, right and natuural family fo orm (Forsberg , 2013). So faar, there is no consensuus on the mattter (Weigel, 2008). Furtherm more, the mod del of the nuclear fam mily as the norrm should be questioned. B By 1994, fam milies that could be caategorised as nuclear fam milies represennted less than n half of Finnish fam milies (Kuosmaanen, 1997, p. 105). The 21st century fam mily discoursee, according tto Yesilova (2009), ( is dominated bby a public, politicised con ncern over thee state of famiilies. This discourse haas attempted to influence ho ow family lifee should be arrranged in a moral andd healthy waay (Yesilova, 2009, p. 344). The nucleear-family

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arrangement has been considered an inevitable biological, psychological and social fact, where family is biologised and not seen as a historical or conventional way of living together (Yesilova, 2009, pp. 202–203). On the other hand, family discourse has also paid attention to the diversity of family forms. Instead of being a natural and stable state, a family can also be seen as being remade and reformed over and over again (Forsberg, 2013; Janhonen-Abruquah, 2010). This deconstruction and reconstruction of the family gives room for a variety of family arrangements to be considered ‘real’ families. Moreover, non-nuclear family forms challenge and undermine the traditional gender order based on gender differences and hierarchy (Eräranta, 2005, p. 27). In the context of same-sex couples, the heterosexual ideal related to parenthood is also questioned. Like gender, family is a social construct (Butler, 2006, p. 54). Thus, the nuclear family can be considered a conceptual construct. The concept of family can be divided into an ideology and lived practices (Forsberg, 2013). Within this setting, the nuclear family can be seen as the ideal that defines the concept of family. Käyhkö (2006) argued that in Finnish schools, the heterosexual ideal of the nuclear family is often presented as the only possible model of a family. Similarly, in our data, all images portraying a family of two adults are families that are composed of a mother, a father and a child or children, i.e. nuclear families. In addition, images of adult men and women portray men and women as different-sex couples. The data does not contain any images of same-sex couples. Furthermore, among boy and girl characters, there was often also an even number of both sexes. Presenting feminine and masculine figures as couples further strengthens the heteronormative setting and creates an illusion of it being the only correct one (Käyhkö, 2006; Ojanen, 2011). De Palma (2013) has suggested queering and transing sex and gender as ways to challenge gender normativity and the socially constructed associations and categories that become accepted as normal and natural order. The images analysed for this study leave very few opportunities for flexible, alternative interpretations on gender, which is a missed opportunity to widen the conception of gender in Home Economics education through learning materials. Therefore, critical literacy skills are needed, on the part of both the teacher and the pupil.

Conclusion In a Home Economics setting, the gendered agencies can be seen as styles to balance between the socio-cultural representations of gender and

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the individual ways to perform it. Our analysis shows that the Home Economics textbook images reflect traditional and heteronormative gender categorisations and styles. Agency is gendered, and the way it is performed produces and reinforces heteronormativity. The images carry powerful messages of what it means to be a boy, girl, man, woman or family. Analysing these illustrations also requires considering what is not seen in the images. Why are female chefs missing from the pictures? Why are there no disabled, elderly and obese people present? Why are persons representing different ethnic groups not included? Both pupils and teachers ought to have good visual literacy skills in order to understand and critically view the messages embedded in Home Economics textbooks. An image may sustain traditional activity patterns in society, and the viewer should be able to challenge and see through these structures critically (Seppänen, 2004). Furthermore, pupils’ unawareness of the messages camouflaged in images may make the images an insidious threat to learning (Good, Woodzicka, & Wingfield, 2010). In the school context, teachers should encourage pupils to read critically and challenge the learning materials used. Teachers should also be encouraged to use images from other sources than textbooks to provide students with alternative representations of gender. Paavola and Dervin (this volume) argue that the lack of diversity in textbook illustration could be because book authors and illustrators represent the majority-white population. A study of the effects of science textbook images (Good, Woodzicka, & Wingfield, 2010) indicated that female high-school students’ learning benefitted from viewing counterstereotypic images of female scientists. Again, presenting diversity can also be problematic. In her analysis of Swedish primary school readers, Eilard (2004) has shown how a well-intended message of diversity in a textbook may simultaneously produce an implicit message promoting a Eurocentric and androcentric order. The controversies that arise from the analysis of the Home Economics textbook images in this study reemphasise the recommendation made by Táboas-Pais and Rey-Cao (2012) to strongly increase the critical awareness among education authorities, publishing houses and teachers of the implications of textbook images for gender equality. As the textbooks are written in multi-professional teams under commercial pressure, the entire publishing team should share a similar understanding of the meaning and importance of images. Authors, editors, illustrators, graphic designers and marketing staff each have an important role in building the visual messages presented alongside the text. Gender issues are of particular relevance in secondary school, as pupils reach puberty during this time. Style and performing gender change

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according to the context. School environments demand certain gender positions. Equality is best achieved when diversity is confronted with an open dialogue (Berg et al., 2011, p. 106). It should be noted, however, that despite the aspiration for equality, people still have differing attitudes toward the genders. It is important to become aware of one’s attitudes and see how they influence the way one behaves (Tainio, 2012). Slow changes in the school system, its lack of forward thinking and its inability to tackle current issues of society have been criticised from the viewpoint of Home Economics education (Kuusisaari, 2014; Turkki, 2009). Equality, according to Turkki (Ibid.), can be reached through genuine encounters of diversity and a dialogue based on mutual interaction. This could create a foundation for equality in schools, homes and working life. Our analysis points to the need to consider whether textbook authors and teachers find it difficult to consider non-heterosexual individuals and families. In our view, Home Economics education should not reproduce traditional gender positions but should show the diversity that is possible within those positions. Instead of focusing on gender in terms of predetermined roles, viewing gender as styles could allow for more flexible notions of being a boy or a girl in the classroom and in other social settings, including the family. It is worth pointing out that not everyone feels a sense of belonging to either of the dichotomies based on sex. Division of the textbook images in this study was done according to this dichotomy, as the characters present in the images were clearly recognisable as boys/men or girls/women based on current western norms. This in itself is a notable outcome of the analysis. Why is it considered important to use human characters that can clearly be defined either as female or male solely by their appearance? We argue that there should be room for less dichotomous approaches that may provide pedagogic opportunities to discuss diversity with the help of textbook images. Textbook images should give the reader an opportunity to critically view human images at the intersections of gender, age, occupation, education, cultural background and other attributes. Gender issues still play a minor role in Finnish teacher education. Lahelma (2014) argued that the concept of gender has different meanings to different people, which may make it difficult to address. However, due to the nature of teachers’ work, teachers can be considered frontline personnel in that they face their pupils’ gender and sexual diversity on a daily basis. As shown by Pendergast (2001), it is also important to view Home Economics teachers themselves from a gendered perspective to deconstruct stereotypical views of this female-dominated profession. Therefore, it is a matter of utmost importance that teachers have both the

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self-awareness related to gender and the required knowledge and skills to face the heterogeneous groups of pupils (Lahelma, 2014; Lehtonen et al., 2014). The forthcoming national basic education curriculum for Home Economics (FNBE, 2014) does not clearly define its approach to gender equality. To meet the objective to advance gender equality, it would be important to explicitly define gender, gender equality, time use and the division of responsibility within families. In today’s society, it is essential to understand and appreciate people’s differences and to be able to act in diverse settings. Home Economics, as a subject characterised by collaboration and communication, provides a favourable context to learn the skills needed in an increasingly diverse world.

Acknowledgements We thank Professor Elina Lahelma for her constructive and critical comments on the early stage of this manuscript. Her input was valuable and encouraging.

Image Sources Example 1. ‘Performing femininity’ in Hämäläinen, M., Isotalo, K., Kojo, H., & Mäkinen, E. (2004). Kotitalouden perustaidot. Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava, p. 74. Example 2. ‘Professional men’ in Kukkola, K., Linjalahti K-M., & Seppänen, H. (2008). Erityisen hyvää! Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava, p. 123. Photo: ScandinavianStockPhoto. Example 3. ‘Domestic women’ in Hämäläinen, M., Jokela, M., Keskinen, H., & Summanen, A-M. (2008). Omat eväät Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava, p. 44. Drawing: Harri Pakarinen. Example 4. ‘Family’ in Haverinen, L., Löytty-Rissanen, M. & Näveri, L. (2006). Kotitaloustaito 7. Helsinki, Finland: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Tammi, p. 224. Photo: Unknown.

References Berg, P., Guttorm, H., Kankkunen, T., Kokko, S., Kuoppamäki, A., Lepistö, J., Turkki, K., Väyrynen, L., & Lehtonen, J. (2011). Tytöille tyttömäistä ja pojille poikamaista – yksilöllisten valintojen viidakossa?: Sukupuolitietoisuus taito- ja taideaineiden opetuksessa ja tutkimuksessa. In J. Lehtonen (Ed.), Sukupuolinäkökulmia

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tutkimusperustaiseen opettajankoulutukseen (pp. 91–116). Helsinki, Finland: Helsingin yliopisto, Käyttäytymistieteiden laitos. Blumberg, R. (2008). The invisible obstacle to educational equality: Gender bias in textbooks. Prospects, 38(3), 345–361. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York, NY: Routledge. —. (2004). Undoing gender. New York: Routledge. —. (2006). Response. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(4), 529–34. Coltrane, S. & Shih, K. Y. (2010). Gender and the division of labor. In J. C. Chrisler & D. R. McCreary (Eds.), Handbook of Gender Research in Psychology (pp. 401–422). New York, NY: Springer. DePalma, R. (2013). Choosing to lose our gender expertise: Queering sex/gender in school settings, Sex Education. Sexuality, Society and Learning, 13(1), 1–15. Eilard, A. (2004). Genus och etnicitet in en ‘läsebok’ i den svenska mångetniska skolan. Pedagogisk Forskning in Sverige, 9(4), 241–262. Eräranta, K. (2005). Heteroseksuaalinen matriisi ja isän vanhemmuus. Naistutkimus – Kvinnoforskning, 3, 19–28. Finland Overview. (2014). In Eurypedia, European Encyclopedia on National Educational Systems. Retrieved from https://webgate. ec.europa.eu/fpfis/mwikis/eurydice/index.php/Finland:Overview Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE). (2004). National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2004: National core curriculum for basic education intended for pupils in compulsory education. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/english/curricula_and_qualifications/ basic_ education —. (2014). Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteiden luonnos [Draft Core Curriculum for Basic Education]. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/ops2016/perusteluonnokset/perusopetus Forsberg, H. (2013). Family Troubles? Contested family practices and moral reasoning – updating concepts of family-related social problems. In J. McCarthy, C.-A. Hooper & V. Gillies (Eds.), Exploring Changes and Challenges in the Family Lives of Children and Young People (pp. 305–314). Bristol, UK: Policy Press. Good, J., Woodzicka, J., & Wingfield, L. (2010). The Effects of Gender Stereotypic and Counter-Stereotypic Text book Images on Science Performance. The Journal of Social Psychology, 150(2), 132–147. Harjunen, H. (2010). Sukupuolittuneen ruumiin muodot ja merkitykset. In M.-L. Rossi & T. Juvonen (Eds.), Käsikirja sukupuoleen (pp. 241– 242). Tampere, Finland: Vastapaino.

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Heinämaa, S. (2012). Sex, Gender and Embodiment. In D. Zahavi (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology (pp. 216–242). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Janhonen-Abruquah, H. (2010). Gone with the wind? Immigrant women and transnational everyday life in Finland. Home Economics and Craft Studies Research Reports 24. Helsinki, Finland: University Print. Jokinen, E. (2009). Home, Work and Affects in the Fourth Shift. In H. Johansson & K. Saarinkangas (Eds.), Homes in Transformation. Dwelling, Moving, Belonging. (pp. 358–375). Helsinki, Finland: SKS. Finnish Literature Society. Kimmel, M. S., Hearn, J., & Connell, R. W. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook of studies on men and masculinities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Kinnunen, T. (2010). Sukupuolen ja seksuaalisuuden ruumiillinen muotooppi. In M.-L. Rossi & T. Juvonen (Eds.), Käsikirja sukupuoleen (pp. 226–240). Tampere, Finland: Vastapaino. Kuosmanen, P. (1997). Lesboäidit ja lapset = lesboperhe? In J. Lehtonen, J. Nissinen & M. Socada (Eds.), Hetero-olettamuksesta moninaisuuteen (pp. 100–110). Helsinki: Edita. Kuusisaari, H. (2014.) Kotitalousoppiaine yhteiskunnallisena suunnannäyttäjänä. In H. Kuusisaari & L. Käyhkö (Eds.), Tutki, kehitä, kehity: Kotitalous yhteiskunnallisena oppiaineena (pp. 9–20). Helsinki, Finland: Books on Demand. Käyhkö, M. (2006). Education society’s dissenters? The relation to education among working-class women trained as cleaners. In A. Antikainen, P. Harinen & C. A. Torres (Eds.), In from the Margins. Adult Education, Work and Civil Society (pp. 199–211). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Lahelma, E. (1992). Sukupuolten eriytyminen peruskoulun opetussuunnitelmassa. Helsinki, Finland: Yliopistopaino. —. (2014). Troubling discourses on gender and education. Educational Research, 56(2), 171–183. Lehtonen, J., Palmu, T. H., & Lahelma, E. (2014). Negotiating sexualities, constructing possibilities: Teachers and diversity. In M.-P. Moreau (Ed.), Inequalities in the Teaching Profession: A Global Perspective (pp. 118–138). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Lewin-Epstein, N., Stier, H., & Braun, M. (2006). The division of household labor in Germany and Israel. Journal of Marriage and Family, 68, 1147–1164.

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Miettinen, A. (2008). Kotityöt, sukupuoli ja tasa-arvo: Palkattoman työn jakamiseen liittyvät käytännöt ja asenteet Suomessa. Väestöntutkimuslaitoksen julkaisusarja E 32/2008. Nardi, Peter M. (2000). Gay masculinities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Official Statistics Finland. (2009). Ajankäyttötutkimus. [Time Use Statistics.] Suomen virallinen tilasto (SVT). Ajankäytön muutokset 2000-luvulla 2009. Helsinki, Finland: Tilastokeskus. Ojala, H., Palmu, T., & Saarinen, J. (2009). Paikalla pysyvää ja liikkeessä olevaa – Feministisiä avauksia toimijuuteen ja sukupuoleen. In H. Ojala, T. Palmu & S. Aaltonen. (Eds.), Sukupuoli ja toimijuus koulutuksessa (pp.13–38). Tampere, Finland: Vastapaino. Ojanen, K. (2011). Katsaus tyttötutkimuksen suomalaisen historiaan ja keskusteluihin. In K. Ojanen, H. Mulari & S. Aaltonen, S. (Eds.), Entäs tytöt. Johdatus tyttötutkimukseen (pp. 9–43). Tampere: Vastapaino. Palmu, T. (2003). Sukupuolen rakentuminen koulun kulttuurisissa teksteissä. Etnografia yläasteen äidinkielen oppitunneilla. Helsingin yliopiston kasvatustieteen laitoksen tutkimuksia 189. Helsinki: Yliopistopaino. Pendergast, D. (2001). Virginal Mothers, Groovy Chicks and Blokey Blokes: Re-thinking Home Economics (and) Teaching Bodies. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press. Pettersson, M. (2007). Att genuszappa på säker eller minerad mark : hemoch konsumentkunskap ur ett könsperspektiv. Doctoral Dissertation, Gothenburg University. Pipping Ekström, M., & Hjälmeskog, K. (2006). 150 år av ‘outsourcing’ av hemarbete. [150 years of out sourcing domestic work]. In K. Hjälmeskog (Ed.), Lärarprofession i förändring: från “skolkök” till hem- och konsumentkunskap (pp. 171–191). Uppsala, Sweden: Föreningen för Svensk Undervisningshistoria. Rossi, L-M. (2010). How to Make (Visual) Trouble Inside Hetero Factory? In L. Martinsson & E. Reimers (Eds.), Norm-Struggles: Reiterations and Subversions of Heteronormativity (pp. 83–95). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Seppänen, J. (2004). Katseen voima. Kohti visuaalista lukutaitoa. Jyväskylä: Gummerus kirjapaino Oy. —. (2005). Visuaalinen kulttuuri. Teoriaa ja metodeja mediakuvan tulkitsijoille. Tampere: Vastapaino. Silverman, D. (2006). Interpreting qualitative data. London, UK: Sage Publications. Sleeter, C., & Grant, C. (2011). Race, Class, Gender, and Disability in Current Textbooks. In E. Provenzo, A. Shaver & M. Bello (Eds.),

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CHAPTER FOUR RELIGION, CULTURE, AND IDEOLOGY: ANALYSING CULTURAL DISCOURSES IN FINNISH RELIGION TEXTBOOK EXERCISES MONIKA SCHATZ AND PIA-MARIA NIEMI

Abstract The intertwined relationship of religions and cultures is often taken for granted but rarely investigated from a closer perspective. While critical studies of intercultural education pay much attention to the conceptualization of ‘culture,’ the characterizations of ‘religion’ are mostly left undiscussed. Similarly research on religious education talks about interreligious dialogues but leaves it unclear how these relate to intercultural education. In the Finnish context both intercultural education and religious education share many of the same objectives and thus they can be seen to be more complementary than contradictory toward each other. However, there exists very little knowledge on the ways these curricular aims are represented in teaching materials. In this study we aim to narrow this gap by presenting an analysis of the intercultural content of textbook exercises about world religions. The data of this case study is derived from a 7th grade exercise book aimed at being used in Lutheran religious education in Finland. We critically investigate the notions of religion and culture in selected exercises with the help of Adrian Holliday’s “Grammar of Culture.” Our findings remind the reader of the political nature of teaching materials and urge teachers to pay attention toward silent ideologies and stereotypes within intercultural and interreligious education.

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Introduction Religion, culture, and ideology are rich and value-laden concepts which have been widely discussed among researchers from various scholarly fields, in public debates and within educational policy discourses. In this chapter we discuss these terms in the context of Finnish basic education. In the Finnish core curriculum for basic education (created by the Finnish National Board of Education, hence FNBE), religion is understood as “one of the underpinning currents influencing human culture” (FNBE, 2004, p. 202), and religious education is a compulsory school subject in public schools (Kallioniemi & Ubani, 2012, p. 178). While religion is regarded as an essential part of culture, the latter remains undefined—yet, it is given the priority of a cross-curricular theme which should be addressed in all school subjects (FNBE, 2014a, p. 10). As a result, Finnish religious education is supposed to cover interreligious education, and, consequently, intercultural education. In the religious education curriculum, the objective is to provide students with the ability to understand and interpret the role of religions in relation to their identities as well as those of others (FNBE, 2004, p. 202; FNBE 2014b, 152; Kallioniemi & Ubani, 2012, p. 178). As pointed out by Rissanen (2012), religions are often merged into cultures in academic literature, and it is thus not surprising that the terms religion and culture—as well as interreligious and intercultural—are often used interchangeably in educational debates. What they have in common is the idea of a familiar self, confronted with a particularly different other, whom one should aim to understand. Yet, how and what can learning materials, such as textbooks, teach about the other? Since Said’s fundamental work on Orientalism (Said, 1978), many postmodern researchers have investigated the process of othering and its unwanted shadow stereotyping. This leads us to our third key term, ideology, defined as “a system of ideas which supports a particular set of interests” (Holliday, 2013, p. 172). Following this definition, we understand ideology as an omnipresent concept; everything that potentially carries norms and values is by nature ideological. In the educational context, fostering interreligious and intercultural understanding is an ideologybased objective. But how are these objectives reflected in actual teaching material? In order to narrow the gap between conceptual academic debates and classroom practices, we chose to apply a strictly theoretical intercultural methodology to 7th grade textbook exercises that are used in Finnish classrooms.

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However, as Mikander (this volume) reminds us, textbooks face a dilemma of having to keep up with a fast-changing world. Especially when it comes to explaining culture and religion, textbooks need to simplify societal issues that are in reality more complex. The simplification process often comes at the price of a limited perspective. As Dervin, Hahl, Härkönen, and Layne (this volume) and Itkonen and Paatela-Nieminen (this volume) emphasize, textbooks convey societal ideologies. According to Anttila, Leskinen, Posti-Ahokas, and Janhunen-Abruquah (this volume) and Mikander (this volume), textbooks also play an important role in projecting, maintaining and reinforcing these ideologies. As researchers we aim to identify these ideologies and analyze them in the context of the curricular goals. We investigate three exercises which aim to familiarize students with other religions and cultures and which are therefore supposedly both interreligious and intercultural. Our research questions are: 1. In what ways are intercultural discourses presented in religious education textbook exercises? 2. What kinds of ideologies about different cultures transfer within exercises on world religions? 3. How are the intercultural aims of the curriculum for Finnish basic education reflected in the exercises? We chose to apply Adrian Holliday’s “Grammar of Culture” (Holliday, 2011, 2013), a conceptual tool for identifying different levels of cultural discourses. It enables us to look beyond the surface level of the exercises and expose the ways in which different religions and cultures are presented. The Grammar was developed to explain intercultural narratives, but we find it important to close the gap between academic discourse and classroom practices. In order to expand the means of the Grammar toward textbook, we aim to produce results which are easily replicable. We hereby hope not only to sensitize readers for intercultural ideologies in teaching materials, but also to provide a tool that makes it easier to detect and problematize them within the classroom. In order to further contextualize this study, we will first present curricular frameworks for intercultural religious education in Finland and discuss our own theoretical understanding of intercultural and interreligious education. We will then introduce Holliday’s Grammar of Culture as a methodology and proceed to our analysis section. After a discussion of our findings, we conclude by examining their significance for researchers and educators.

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Curricular Links of Intercultural Education and Religious Education in Finland In Finland, the context of this study, basic education consists of nine years of comprehensive school education that includes six years at primary level (approx. 7–13-year-olds) and three years at lower secondary level (approx. 13–16-year-olds). The main objectives of education are defined in the national core curriculum (see Introduction to this volume; FNBE, 2004). This core curriculum provides overall guidelines for all basic education in Finnish schools and acts as the basis for detailed local level curricula that are created in the municipalities and at schools (Hella & Wright, 2009). A curriculum reform is being prepared and the current curriculum from 2004 will be replaced by a new version in 2016. Religious education in Finland has been non-confessional at all school levels since the Freedom of Religion Act was renewed in 2003 (Aikonen, 2012, pp. 64–65). Almost 80% of Finns are registered as Lutheran (Official Statistics of Finland, 2013), but religious minorities are entitled to their own religious education under certain conditions (Basic Education Act, 1998, 2003). Furthermore, students who are unable to obtain education of their own religion or who do not belong to any religious community may replace religious education with secular ethics courses. In 2013, there were 13 official curricula for religious education in Finland. However, due to the vast majority of Lutherans and different practical challenges related to organizing classes for small religious groups, such as a lack of qualified teachers and teaching materials (Sakaranaho, 2007), attending Lutheran religion classes is still the most common choice for Finnish students. Therefore, the data for this study is derived from a Lutheran religious textbook series. Comparing the objectives of the religious education subject with intercultural education objectives in the national core curriculum reveals many similarities. In the 2004 curriculum, intercultural education is presented through the cross-curricular theme “Cultural identity and internationalism.” Intercultural education promotes learning about “one’s own culture, the culture of one’s home region, and the nature of being Finnish, Nordic, and European,” “other cultures and multiculturalism,” “human rights and prerequisites for trust, mutual respect, and successful cooperation among human groups,” “internationalism in different spheres of life, and skills for functioning in international interaction,” and learning “the importance of the culture or manners” (FNBE, 2004, p. 37). Similarly, the draft for the new curriculum includes a cross-disciplinary content area of “Cultural knowledge/competence, interaction and

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expression” (“Kulttuurinen osaaminen, vuorovaikutus ja ilmaisu”). According to the draft document, the students “grow in a world that is diverse in relation to culture, languages, religions, and worldviews” (FNBE, 2014a, p. 15). The students are guided to “learn and appreciate their living surroundings and its cultural heritage, as well as their own social, cultural, religious, worldview, and linguistic roots” (FNBE, 2014a, p. 15). Expanding upon the previous curriculum, the draft discusses cultures as different kinds of groups that are transforming and co-existing (FNBE, 2014a, p. 21). Schools are presented as enablers of intercultural understanding by supporting students to recognize and cherish cultural diversity (FNBE, 2014a, p. 10). The emphasis on intercultural learning may be a response to increasing diversity in Finnish society, but it also reflects the encouragement of researchers and EU guidelines to develop students’ intercultural competencies and abilities to encounter religious diversities (Council of Europe, 2008; Riitaoja & Dervin, 2014; Weisse, 2011). The objectives of intercultural education are very much reflected in the current subject-specific curriculum for religious education. In fact, the language of familiarizing with one’s own background and learning about the other is almost identical. According to the general aims concerning the curricula for all religious education groups, religious education should familiarize the students with their “own religion,” and with “the Finnish spiritual tradition.” The students should be introduced to other religions as well as “understand the cultural and human meaning of religions.” The students should be educated about ethical living and be helped to “understand the ethical dimension of religion” (FNBE, 2004, p. 202). These objectives demonstrate that religious education, along with the curriculum’s intercultural education theme, aims to support reciprocal learning about one’s own traditions and the importance of ethical encountering of others. The implementation of these general aims is further specified in the individual curricula of the different religious education groups. According to the 2004 curriculum for Lutheran religion, the world religions, as well as the cultural, historical, and societal dimensions related to religions are discussed at the secondary school level. More specifically, the aims for grades 6 to 9 are that students “understand the nature and importance of their own and other religions” (FNBE, 2004, p. 205; FNBE, 2014b, p. 152). Yet, there is no consensus among researchers and practitioners on what these terms actually mean, which demands a more thorough theoretical discussion on the these concepts.

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Conceptualizing an Intercultural Perspective toward Interreligious Education As mentioned earlier, culture and religion are terms which often appear closely intertwined or even exchangeable. However, research on these terms has remained divided among the field of religious education and cultural studies. The intercultural or interreligious aspects of religions have mainly been discussed by researchers within the field of religious education, mostly concentrating on interfaith dialogue (e.g. Carmody, 2013; Kallioniemi & Ubani, 2012), in which culture is attributed a minor role. Similarly, research on culture has often regarded religion as a subcategory of culture (Fletcher, 2008). But as Rissanen (2012) suggests, neglecting the significance and nature of religion may lead to difficulties in intercultural encounters as social boundaries related to religion may be stronger than cultural ones. However, the same could be argued vice versa: cultural bonds might in some circumstances be more essential than religious ones. We therefore suggest moving beyond this artificial division and propose to understand both religion and culture as ‘fluid’ concepts conveying different meanings for different people in different circumstances. Several postmodern researchers have demonstrated that cultures are not containers which define people’s values and behaviors, but instead they are constantly negotiated, dialogical constructions (cf. Bauman, 2004; Baumann, 1996; Breidenbach & Nyíri, 2009; Dervin, 2011; Phillips, 2009; Piller, 2011). As Jay Lemke (2008) argues: “We may claim affiliation with different cultures and with different institutions and act differently, playing different roles, foregrounding different ‘sides’ of our personality in each” (p. 19). Following these premises, the objective of intercultural education should not be to describe—and thereby necessarily oversimplify and stereotype—other cultures. Instead, it should aim at questioning the ways the term ‘culture’ is used to establish identities and justify power hierarchies in various contexts (Dervin, 2011; Phillips, 2009). As Dervin and his colleagues argue (Dervin, Paatela-Nieminen, Kuoppala, & Riitaoja, 2012), intercultural competence does not mean knowing facts about different traditions or worldviews, but the ability to critically reflect upon these ‘facts’ and question what is considered to be permanent or taken for granted. Similar to a constructivist approach to culture, religious scholars have argued that faith is essentially shaped through interreligious encounters (Boys, 2010). Like cultures, religions should not be depicted as solid or clearly recognizable entities. Instead, what we would recognize as intercultural religious education should acknowledge the transformative

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aspects of religions and the fact that people may engage with them in many different ways and at different levels. Intercultural religious education would then aim at enhancing students’ ability to see the similarities between religions, as well as the diversities within religious traditions, not only between them (Dervin, 2011). Further, both interreligious and intercultural education should include a critical discussion on how these terms are related to each other. The Finnish curriculum seemingly recognizes this by regarding intercultural education as an underlying theme of all subjects, and as outlined above, it is strongly linked to the objectives of interreligious education. However, to our knowledge, there has been little research on how the existing pedagogical resources match the intercultural aims of the curriculum. Thus, we find it necessary to investigate how the two are aligned and presented in textbook exercises.

Introducing the Grammar of Culture As outlined earlier, we want to provide a case study that forwards replicable data. That is often a problem in interpretative research (Pyysiäinen, 2005), in which an empirical research methodology is dominant. For our analysis we chose Adrian Holliday’s Grammar of Culture, an abstract theoretical model, which previously has not been used as a methodological tool. Holliday, Professor of Applied Linguistics, created the Grammar by analyzing intercultural narratives, and he uses it to explain what actually happens in so-called intercultural communication (Holliday, 2011, 2013). The Grammar enables Holliday to capture both visible and hidden forms of cultural discourses. We therefore found it suitable for our research questions, and applying the model step by step will allow the reader to follow the process of our analysis. The Grammar helps to reveal hidden ideologies in the way culture is negotiated in everyday encounters. Ideology, in this context, does not necessarily carry a negative connotation; it is a web of ideas in which statements or objects are created. These affect their surroundings, and thus they are not only products of ideology but also actors in the sense that they either support or challenge other ideologies. For example the current Finnish curriculum, as discussed above, is ideological; not only because it carries an agenda for the schools but because it represents a particular school system, uses a certain language, promotes particular values, represents bureaucratic structures of the Finnish society, and responds to guidelines provided by the European Union and many other internal and external parameters. The list could be endless depending on which aspect

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of the curriculum is undder scrutiny. Some S of thosse ideologies are more visible than others, depennding on the context c of anaalysis. Hollidaay (2011) suggests thaat “ideologiess are so far-reeaching and ddeeply rooted d as to be invisible to their authors” (p. 196), an nd thus the aiim of the Graammar of Culture is noot to get rid off ideologies bu ut to make theem visible.

Figure 1: Thee Grammar of Culture; C Hollidaay, 2013.

As Figuure 1 above illlustrates, acccording to Hoolliday (2013), culture operates onn three domaiins: “particullar social andd political strructures,” “particular cultural prodducts,” and “underlying universal prrocesses.” Stating from m the right side s of the illlustration, thhe domain, “p particular cultural prodducts” includes “artefacts” such as literaature, arts and d cultural practices. Fuurther, “statem ments about culture,” c mean aning how peo ople refer to their cultture, are incluuded in this domain. d The ccurriculum seerves as a good exampple: it is a cuultural artefacct, a product of the curren nt Finnish school systeem. At the sam me time it includes statemeents about cultture since it carries nuumerous ideass on what “Fiinnish educatiion” is, what it is not, what it couldd be, what it should s be, and d what it shoulld not be. The leftt domain of the Grammaar, “particular ar social and political structures,” refers to thhe institutionaal “cultural rresources,” which w are

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formed by the context one is brought up in (such as language, education, and religion), and “global position and politics,” which describes how one’s own cultural resources relate to others. The curriculum could be analyzed from this domain as well; it draws upon many cultural resources, such as the Finnish educational system which defines the aims and content of the curriculum. The cultural resources establish the context in which the curriculum is meaningful, and are therefore connected with its global position and politics. After all, what makes the Finnish curriculum “Finnish,” is an understanding of Finland as a particular nation among others, which requires the context of nation states. This means that the notions included or excluded from educational material cannot be cut out from wider discourses on nations, culture, education, the intercultural, and the like. Both—included content and what is left out—are representations of ideologies. And since these ideologies confirm some structures of society while they oppose others, they can be regarded as political. An understanding for the particular social and political structures is formed by one’s own personal trajectories, i.e. the way individuals make sense of their roots and lifestyle, depending on their background, personality and life experiences. These trajectories enable people to negotiate particular social and political structures, which is why the boundaries between the two domains are permeable. The last domain, “underlying universal cultural processes” describes how people form groups and how they negotiate their belonging to communities. Holliday calls these communities “small cultures,” which includes all kinds of social bonds from families to work space cultures to leisure activities, or any other form of joint cooperation. The curriculum could be regarded as forming small cultures, i.e. through the way it defines what a Finnish classroom is, while the classroom itself can be made up of other “small culture units” such as different groups among the children. All three domains are in a relationship with each other, which is not hierarchical but more a reciprocal interplay between the particular and the universal. The interplay is a constant negotiation, which is marked by resistance or confirmation of social structures. The curriculum serves here as a good example, because it is constantly adapting to changes in society, but it can also be seen as an agent of change itself. Holliday himself compares the Grammar of Culture with Korzybski’s map-territory relation—a map serves as a tool to orientate oneself in the territory, but it does not constitute the territory itself (cf. Korzybski, 1933). Similarly, the Grammar does not attempt to explain culture in all its complexity, but it serves as a tool to grasp some of the many levels on which culture operates (Holliday, 2011).

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Data Selection and Applied Methodology Although Holliday’s model is seemingly complex, we found it easily applicable and suitable for the textbook analysis. It is developed to detect the ideologies in intercultural discourse. Interreligious textbook exercises can also be considered written discourse, which should be intercultural according to the curricular objectives. Further, textbook exercises can be used analogous to intercultural narratives: they are not only “particular cultural products” but further aim to engage the students in “underlying universal processes” and contain representations of “particular social and political structures.” Nevertheless, a few critical remarks have to be made about our data and its methodological implications. When conducting research on textbooks and exercises, it is important to bear in mind that teaching material in itself does not represent the way teaching is actually carried out. As authors of this chapter we are aware of the limitations of approaching textbook exercises isolated from their use in the classroom, and do not aim to make conclusions about the different ways they can be used in teaching. Another important aspect we wish to point out is that by analyzing the content of educational material, we do not aim to make any claims on the actual learning outcomes of the students. The purpose of this study is not to evaluate the exercises as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as such, but to point out that even the most subtle discourses about ‘us’ and the ‘other’ are often not as neutral as they might appear. As Mikander (this volume) demonstrates, textbooks have a crucial role in forming perceptions of normality. The manner in which textbook exercises depict cultures, religions and the roles of individuals within communities has a strong influence on the construction of implicit dichotomies between ‘us’ and the ‘other.’ It is therefore important to investigate what kind of intercultural narratives textbook exercises carry along. What is further challenging in the analogy of Holliday’s narratives and our data is that the exercises are an end-product of a process which is shaped by multiple authors, publishers, and other influences. An exercise is never isolated from the context within which it is used and from the students and teachers that are involved. Figure 2 illustrates how a textbook exercise is in fact embedded in multiple ideologies that are created both in the publication process of the teaching material and in the application of the material in teaching.

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Figure 2: Ideologies in Education; by authors.

The ideologies related to the publication process are illustrated on the left hand side, while local-level actors, influencing both development and the use of teaching materials, are depicted on the right hand side. The national core curriculum outlines the work of textbook companies and local-level school policies. By defining the main aims and contents for basic education, it also frames the work of textbook authors. The authors on their part must negotiate the ideologies or educational policies, their own ideologies as experts of their fields, and the ideologies and financial interests of the publishing houses. In addition to the national curriculum, the local curricula and policies of individual schools and teachers affect the way teaching materials are shaped to match the needs of the school. Thus at the classroom level the teachers are not merely negotiating between their personal ideologies and the ideologies of the students, but with all of the ideologies hidden within educational policies and teaching materials. We acknowledge that the omnipresence of ideologies poses an obstacle for research, and we argue that it is even more important for researchers to make these ideologies visible. Based on its popularity, we chose to analyze a textbook series developed for the Finnish Lutheran religion classes. As our interest lies in the representations of culture, religion, and ideologies, we searched for a textbook that introduces students to the world religions and reflects the interreligious and intercultural objectives of the national core curriculum. Although the Finnish curriculum does not divide the content areas to different grades, it has become a common practice to introduce world

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religions in the 7th grade. We chose Lipas (“small chest”; all translations by the chapter authors), a textbook series containing textbooks for all lower secondary grades. It is a relevant example because it is one of the most recent textbooks available (currently in its 5th edition from 2013) and published by the largest publishing house of educational materials in Finland, Sanoma Pro. Lipas 7 Maailmanuskonnot (“world religions”) consists of a textbook on world religions and it is accompanied by an exercise book. Both are written by Finnish teachers and educational experts (Holm, Kronlund, Parviola, & Vaaramo, 2013a, 2013b) who have also written several other textbooks for religious and secular ethics education. The textbook and exercise book are divided into nine chapters that include first the introduction to the field in the opening chapter called “What is religion?” In the following chapters the book introduces different religions in the following order: prehistoric religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, religions of China (traditional national religions and worship of ancestry, Confucianism Daoism and Chinese Buddhism), religions of Japan (Shintoism, Japanese Buddhism and Zen Buddhism), Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In order to choose the sample of exercises, both of us authors went through the books, and we independently picked ten exercises that asked the students to relate to another religion in another cultural context. After comparing our choices, we conducted a preliminary content analysis of the six exercises that we had both chosen as the most relevant. In the content analysis we looked at the ways the exercises approached the notions of religion and culture and their learning outcomes from the perspective of interreligious education. Neither the textbook itself nor the chosen exercises problematize the terms culture and religion; they are often grouped as one or even used interchangeably (for example Chinese Buddhism = Chinese culture). This encouraged us to carry out a more indepth inquiry of the intercultural and interreligious content of the exercises. In a second round of analysis we examined the exercises with the help of Holliday’s Grammar and categorized the content and phrasing closely according to three main dimensions, a) “particular social and political structures” (including cultural resources and global position and politics), b) “underlying universal cultural processes” (including “small culture formation”) and c) “particular cultural products” (including “artefacts” and “statements about culture”). The domain “personal trajectories” was left aside in the analysis because the exercises themselves do not shed light on students’ and teachers’ personal backgrounds. We chose to present the following three exercises which we considered as illustrative examples. We paid particular attention to the three exercises

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which differ in the structure and content and their levels of interculturality in terms of presenting in-groups and out-groups.

Analysing Ideologies in Intercultural Textbook Exercises Example I: Mapping World Religions As the first example, we look at an exercise that is part of the first chapter of the exercise book, which introduces the concept of world religions (Holm, Kronlund, Parviola, & Vaaramo, 2013b, p. 4). Students are presented with a world map centering Europe, which shows the outlines of countries, and only a few parts of the maps are shaded: the area of North Africa (down to Sierra Leone in the west and Somalia in the east), as well as the Arabian Peninsula, Turkey and the Middle East, Central Asia (including Pakistan and parts of China), Bangladesh and Indonesia are colored with grey stripes. Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam are colored dark grey. The task is to identify which religion is located a) in the striped area and b) in the dark area. The answers according to the textbook are a) Islam and b) Buddhism. The apparent learning objective of the exercise is to familiarize students with the geographical spread of those two religions, but the application of Holliday’s Grammar of Culture model reveals that the seemingly neutral map actually holds several implications of ideology and power. When applying the Grammar to this exercise, we consider the map itself to constitute a “particular cultural product” that has been produced in a particular political context. Choosing a Eurocentric map as its perspective makes the exercise already biased toward other possible ways of depicting the world. While the choice is understandable from the point of view that the users of the book are assumed to be European, it is important to recognize that this too is a choice which entails “statements about culture.” The most obvious level of these cultural statements is the oversimplified representation of the spread of Buddhism and Islam in the world. When depicted from this Eurocentric perspective, both religions seem to be far away from Finland, and even from Europe. Yet, the number of people belonging to Islamic congregations in Finland has increased throughout the whole beginning of the 21st century and nowadays Muslims form a large religious minority group in Finland (Ketola, 2010; Official Statistics in Finland, 2013). This mirrors the changes of religious landscape all over the world. By creating an imagined array of Muslim and Buddhist countries, the map ignores the actual spread of the practitioners of these religions, making the faith systems look static and unchangeable.

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In terms of the Grammar the map reflects and constructs “particular social and political structures” by dividing the world into Muslim and nonMuslim countries, Buddhist and non-Buddhist countries, and respective Christian and non-Christian countries. Hereby the map carries tacit ideologies about the social cohesion of nations and religions, and it is in itself political. It is important to remember that the “underlying universal cultural processes” of this map are strongly dependent on the ways teachers present the exercise to students, as well as to the ways the students interpret the aim of the exercise. By analyzing the levels of cultural discourses it can however be said that the map is not an ideologically neutral object. Instead it entails silent categories according to which the students are guided to place Finland and themselves in relation to Muslims and Buddhists. Depicting religions as tightly connected to geographical areas can make the representatives of these ‘other’ religions seem distant, even though there may be Muslim and Buddhist children in the school classroom. Hence, by critically examining the map, a seemingly mere geographical exercise turns out to administer small group formation by creating ‘us’ versus ‘them’ binaries which are created or solidified in the classroom.

Example II: A Finnish Proverb The second exercise is taken from the exercise book’s chapter on Hinduism (Holm, Kronlund, Parviola, & Vaaramo, 2013b, p. 21). The students are presented with the Finnish proverb “Minkä taakseen jättää, sen edestään löytää” (“What is left behind will be found ahead”), and they are asked to relate the phrase to Hindu worldview. Yet, how to possibly define the “Hindu worldview”? The exercise operates with the construction of two strikingly different cultural spheres, the Finnish (a small group defined by nationality) and the Hindu (a huge part of the world population defined by religion). As in the map-exercise above, this is a problematic mélange of nationality, cultural background, and religious affiliation. Looking at the particular social and political structures embedded in this exercise, it can be seen that the juxtaposition between “the Finns” and “the Hindus” is clearly an unbalanced comparison. Within this frame, the proverb is presented as a particular cultural artefact, a particular “Finnish” product which captures a “Finnish” mindset, which is bound to being “Finnish.” In order to solve the task, the students are required to identify with this context and understand the “Finnishness” of the proverb. From an intercultural perspective this is problematic as it is based on an imagined, national stereotype of a Finnish mindset. And

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again, an ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy is evoked when students are asked to compare themselves with “the Hindu” culture that serves as a non-Finnish antagonist within the exercise. By asking the students to recapitulate the knowledge learned about “the Hindus” and to contrast it with “Finnishness,” the exercise promotes oversimplified constructions and reinforces cultural—and national—stereotypes. However, the exercise appears in a different light when looking at the underlying statements about culture. On this level, the imagined “Finnishness” of the proverb is challenged by asking the students to identify similarities rather than differences. This complicates and problematizes both the “Finnishness” of the proverb and the “Hindu-ness” of “Hindu” worldview. The statements about culture thus imply a connection rather than forming a distinction, which appears to be a promising attempt to build bridges between the two groups. Similarly, on the level of “global positioning and politics,” the “Finnish” mindset and the “Hindu” mindset are presented as comparable, which places “Finns” and “Hindus” on the same level. Yet what remains is an artificial grouping of people, which does not take the multiplicity of cultural and religious identities into account. This exercise reflects the complexity of cultural discourses and the variety of interpretations they offer. Depending on how the exercise is used in teaching, either differences or similarities are emphasized. This constitutes both a challenge and an opportunity to question established categorizations by problematizing the notion of culture and religion beyond cultural tokens. As researchers we believe that this friction makes a significant difference and is helpful in promoting intercultural understanding. An emphasis on similarities promotes equality, which establishes a good foundation for promoting a positive stance toward diversity called upon by the Finnish curriculum for basic education (FNBE, 2004; FNBE, 2014a).

Example III: Letter of a Chinese Father The third exercise we selected is part of the fifth chapter of the exercise book, which introduces Chinese religions (Holm, Kronlund, Parviola, & Vaaramo, 2013b, p. 31). The students are asked to imagine themselves as being a Chinese father in the countryside, whose son recently got married and moved to a town. In the role of the father, the students are asked to formulate a letter to the son, in which they convince him to have children, and preferably at least one son. Below the exercise instructions, a paper is drawn with the starting and closing phrases “Dear son,” “With love, your

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father.” The exercise asks students to put themselves into the shoes of the other, the other here being a Chinese father, and it thus creates a personalized understanding for the arguments of that imagined father. This type of role-play is a widely applied didactic tool that is used to create empathy in intercultural trainings and commonly recommended in teaching (Fowler & Blohm, 2004). However, from a constructivist perspective toward culture, the exercise is problematic. When imagining a Chinese father, the students are forced to create an archetype of a typical Chinese. Yet, as Dervin (2011) demonstrates, the “typical Chinese” does not exist. The students therefore have to create and empathize with a stereotype, which is meant to be not only representative for a different culture but a different generation and often gender as well. Looking at the exercise under the lenses of the Grammar of Culture reveals further promotion of stereotypes. In the section of “particular cultural products,” we found that the task description itself contains multiple “statements about culture”: In China, family planning is a matter between father and son, a Chinese father wants his son to have children, and a Chinese father prefers sons over daughters. While the textbook chapter on Chinese religions does not mention gender issues at all, the exercise clearly presumes a “typical” Chinese father to have a patriarchal mindset. This constructs “particular social and political structures” in an ideology-driven way. The ideologies are created through the interplay among three different actors: the imagined Chinese father, the imagined Chinese son, and the (equally imagined) Finnish student. The “Finnish” student, as imagined by the exercise authors, has a bird’s eye view as he/she creates the other two characters (father and son). Ideology and stereotypes are thus emerging on different levels. The relation between father and son is marked by difference in terms of age and lifestyle. Their differences are implied by the urge of the father to explain his wishes to his son through a letter; thus indicating a tension between the father’s “traditional” family values and lifestyle (e.g. letter chosen instead of email) and the son’s “modern” life in the city. The textbook chapter to which the exercise belongs places a lot of emphasis on the longevity of Chinese religions and traditions, which provides the father’s views on family with authority. But in order to complete the exercises, the Finnish student is expected to be able to empathize with both the father, who wants a grandson, and the son, who needs to be convinced to have children. The student thus needs to invent both a stereotypical Chinese father and a stereotypical Chinese son who operate within a patriarchal value system. At the same time the Finnish educational system refers to itself as promoting gender equality (Ministry

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of Education and Culture, 2012, p. 7), which makes the “Chinese” gender discourse morally “unwanted,” thus inferior to “Finnish” values. The Finnish student is not supposed to favor sons over daughters but is taught that Chinese fathers do so because of their religious traditions. Looking at “global positioning and politics,” this feeds the imagined gap between an enlightened, equality promoting, tolerant Finland and a traditional, chauvinistic China. As in the previous exercise, the underlying universal process taking place is the construction and reification of small cultures which are defined by what they are not: youth–tradition, Finnish–Chinese, us–them. In this case, the use of stereotypes in order to create understanding is very problematic from our point of view, because it generates a false image of both “the Chinese” and “the Finns.”

Discussion According to Holliday, “ideology is everywhere” (Holliday, 2011, p. 187). The aim of this case study was to problematize tacit ideologies about culture in a religious education textbook that aims to enhance students’ understanding of world religions. Indeed, in the case of Lipas our analysis of three sample exercises confirmed that by taking a close critical look, both implicit and explicit ideologies can be drawn from the formulation of exercises. Education and teaching materials exist in certain contexts and they have certain goals and they are thus not neutral tools. However, the key finding of this study is the fact that despite of their general goals the actual content of textbooks and exercises entails several underlying perceptions of culture which can be subjected to a variety of interpretations. While multiple interpretations are inevitable in all aspects of written and spoken texts, it is highly important that these various discourses are opened up and subjected to a critical examination. The notion of ideology is also present in this study; thus our research has its own aims and restrictions. As outlined previously, textbook exercises do not exist isolated from teaching and other teaching material. Doing a mere theoretical analysis of exercises is therefore limited as it does not take into account the various discussions and interpretations that could happen in the actual learning situation. The study is also limited in terms of sample as it used a selective sample of exercises. The three exercises were chosen to exemplify how intercultural learning materials tacitly bring ideology into the classroom, but they are not meant to represent the Lipas textbook as such. Following our own understanding of intercultural religious education, we have focused on problematizing the presence of stereotypes in teaching about other cultures and religions. In a

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way this was a pilot study for applying critical intercultural research toward Finnish classroom equipment, with an ideology of its own, namely to raise questions and discussions about them. With regard to our research questions it was a rewarding undertaking. Concerning the first question “In what ways are intercultural discourses presented in religious education textbook exercises?” it became apparent that neither the Finnish curriculum nor the textbook exercises make a clear distinction between intercultural and interreligious education. The concepts of religion, culture, and nationality are mixed without critical reflections on comparing for example Finland and Hinduism. In terms of teaching and learning methods, the exercises aimed to increase intercultural understanding with many approaches. The firstly discussed exercise of the map (Example I) was based on repetition and application of learned facts. As the analysis revealed, learning ‘facts’ about intercultural understanding turns out challenging as it easily leads to oversimplification. The second exercise of the proverb (Example II) used imaginations of the other as a method to create understanding. This approach can be counterproductive; rather than creating intercultural understanding it possibly confirms stereotypes, as the frame of reference for the imaginations of difference must be ideological. Yet the comparative aspect was designed to inspire the students to look for similarities among them and the other and to encourage self-reflection. This contains an ideology aligned to the aims of the curriculum and our own agenda to promote intercultural religious education. Finally the letter (Example III) presented students with an us–them dichotomy which is, according to intercultural ideologies, highly problematic as it creates the image of a superior self against an inferior, backwards other. Intercultural discourse was again targeted at understanding the other, but from a perspective reminiscent of a colonial attitude. Our second research question “What kinds of ideologies about different cultures transfer within exercises on world religions?” examined to what extent academic discourses on interculturality are reflected in the teaching materials. We elaborated on the hidden ideologies within the analysis chapter, which in summary shows that ideologies on cultures and religions are not critically questioned within the textbook exercises. It thus remains the responsibility of the teachers to find ways to discuss these ideologies in the classroom. The third research question, “How are the intercultural aims of the curriculum for Finnish basic education reflected in the exercises?” can only be answered partially, since we discovered that only some of the aims of the Finnish curriculum are addressed within the exercises. All three

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exercises aim to familiarize the students with the other, but only one of the three exercises addressed the curricula’s emphases on students’ reflection upon their own backgrounds in relation to the customs, life situations, worldviews (FNBE, 2014a, p. 10) and cultures (FNBE, 2004, p. 37) of others. It can be concluded that the exercises analyzed in this study do not problematize the terms culture and religion; instead, both concepts were presented as static and homogenous in all three exercises. ‘Cultural diversity’ was absent in these exercises, both regarding the cultural diversity of others and the cultural diversity within the classroom. Therefore it could be argued that the key aims of the curriculum— ’interaction,’ ‘internationalism’ and ‘multiculturalism’—were not fully taken into consideration. This demands attention as the surrounding society has become more plural and religiously diverse.

Final Remarks The need for truly intercultural and interreligious education has been highlighted by researchers and educators. But as our study revealed, it is important to closely investigate how these concepts are implemented. We discovered ideologies and stereotypes in textbook exercises which aim to promote intercultural objectives. This was fostered by the use of Holliday’s Grammar of Culture, a model which was drafted to reveal statements about culture. Our study shows that the model does not only provide theoretical insights, but it is also applicable as a methodological tool in other contexts, such as textbook exercises. As such it turned out to be a rewarding method forwarding actual reproducible data within an interpretative framework. We provided an in-depth analysis of three exemplary exercises in order to sensitize our readers to how textbook exercises promote or hinder the creation of interreligious dialogues. Coulby (2006) suggested that intercultural education should be the starting point of all educational activities. In order to make this happen, we believe that a more open and critical discussion is needed on what intercultural education actually means. Further interdisciplinary dialogue between researchers in the fields of intercultural education and religious education is needed in order to support the development of truly intercultural and interreligious learning materials. Despite the perhaps disturbing results of our analysis, we are convinced that any exercise can be turned into a valuable tool. As we have argued, the presence of ideologies in general might be inevitable but it is possible to make them visible and to recognize the stereotypes they carry

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along. Addressing and negotiating these stereotypes in the classrooms will enable reflections among the students on their own cultural and religious identities and on their disposition toward others. We hope this study encourages teachers to become familiar with means of detecting and discussing ideologies in their teaching materials.

References Aikonen, R. (2012). What Is the Purpose of Religious Education in the Finnish Context? Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 57, 1–4. Basic Education Act (2003). Basic Education Act 1998/628, §13 Religious education and ethics. Amendment 454/2003. §13. Translation of the Finnish Acts of Parliament. Retrieved from http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/1998/en19980628.pdf Bauman, Z. (2004). Identity: Conversations with Benedetto Vecchi. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Baumann, G. (1996). Contesting culture: Discourses of identity in multiethnic London. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Boys, M. C. (2010). The Promise and Perils of Inter-Religious Education. Toronto Journal of Theology, 26(1), 21–32. Breidenbach, J., & Nyíri, P. (2009). Seeing culture everywhere: From genocide to consumer habits. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Carmody, B. (2013). Pedagogy for InterȬReligious Education. The Heythrop Journal, 54(5), 813–824. Coulby, D. (2006). Intercultural education: theory and practice. Intercultural education, 17(3), 245–257. Council of Europe. (2008). White paper on intercultural dialogue. Living together as equals in dignity. Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe Publishing. Dervin, F. (2011). A plea for change in research on intercultural discourses: A “liquid” approach to the study of the acculturation of Chinese students. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 6(1), 37–52. Dervin, F., Paatela-Nieminen, M., Kuoppala, K., & Riitaoja, A.-L. (2012). Multicultural Education in Finland: Renewed Intercultural Competencies to the Rescue? International Journal of Multicultural Education, 14(3), 1–13. Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE). (2004). National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2004: National core curriculum for basic education intended for pupils in compulsory education. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/english/curricula_and_qualifications/basic_ education

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Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE). (2014a). Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet: Luvut 1–12. Luonnos 19.9.2014. [National Core Curriculum for Basic Education: Chapters 1–12. Draft 19.9.2014.] Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/download/160358_ opsluonnos_perusopetus_luvut_1_12_19092014.pdf —. (2014b). Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet: Opetus vuosiluokilla 7–9. Luonnos 19.9.2014. [National Core Curriculum for Basic Education: Teaching in grades 7–9. Draft 19.9.2014]. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/download/160362_opsluonnos_perusopetus_ vuosiluokat_7_9_19092014.pdf Fletcher, J. H. (2008): Religious Pluralism in an Era of Globalization: The Making of Modern Religious Identity. Theological Studies, 69, 394– 411. Hella, E., & Wright, A. (2009). Learning “about” and “from” religion: Phenomenography, the variation theory of learning and religious education in Finland and the UK. British Journal of Religious Education, 31(1), 53–64. Holliday, A. (2011). Intercultural communication & ideology. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. —. (2013). Understanding intercultural communication: Negotiating a grammar of culture. New York, NY: Routledge. Holm, K., Kronlund, M., Parviola, J., & Vaaramo, R. (2013a). Lipas 7. Maailmanuskonnot. Helsinki: Sanoma Pro. Holm, K., Kronlund, M., Parviola, J., & Vaaramo, R. (2013b). Lipas 7. Maailmanuskonnot. Tehtäväkirja. Helsinki: Sanoma Pro. Kallioniemi, A., & Ubani, M. (2012). Religious education in Finnish School System. In H. Niemi, A. Toom & A. Kallioniemi (Eds.), Miracle of Education: The principles and practices of teaching and learning in Finnish schools (pp. 177–188). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Ketola, Kimmo. (2010). Uskontotilanteen muutos ja suomalaisten suhtautuminen eri uskontoihin. In V. Jalovaara, (Ed), Uskonnon ylösnousemus, Kirkon, uskonnon ja kulttuurin murros (pp. 40–51). Magma Studie 4. Retrieved from http://www.magma.fi/images/stories/ reports/ms1004_religionen_web.pdf Korzybski, A. (1933). A Non-Aristotelian System and its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics. Science and Sanity, 747–761. Lemke, J. L. (2008). Identity, Development and Desire: Critical Questions. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard & R. Iedema (Eds), Identity Trouble. Critical Discourse and Contested Identities (pp.17–42). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Ministry of Education and Culture (2012). Education and Research 2011– 2016 A development plan. Reports of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland 2012. Retrieved from http://www.minedu.fi/export/ sites/default/OPM/Julkaisut/2012/liitteet/okm03.pdf Official Statistics of Finland (2013). Population Structure 2013. Helsinki: Advisory Board of OSF. Retrieved from http://www.stat.fi/til/vaerak/ 2013/vaerak_2013_2014-03-21_tau_002_en.html Phillips, A. (2009). Multiculturalism without culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Piller, I. (2011). Intercultural communication: A critical introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pyysiäinen, I (2005). Introduction. In Gothoni et al. (Eds.), How to do comparative religion?: Three ways, many goals. Religion and reason 44 (pp. 1–63). Berlin, Germany: de Gruyter. Riitaoja, A.-L., & Dervin, F. (2014). Interreligious dialogue in schools: Beyond asymmetry and categorisation? Language and Intercultural Communication. 14(1), 76–90. Said, E. W. (1987). Orientalism. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Sakaranaho, T. (2007). Pienryhmäisten uskontojen opetus ja monikulttuurisuuden haasteet. In Kallioniemi, A & Salmenkivi, E. (Eds.), Katsomusaineiden kehittämishaasteita: Opettajankoulutuksen tutkinnonuudistuksen virittämää keskustelua. Tutkimuksia, 279 (pp. 3–16). Helsinki: Yliopistopaino. Retrieved from http://www.helsinki.fi/vokke/english/katsomus.pdf Weisse, W. (2011). Reflections on the REDCo project. British Journal of Religious Education, 33(2), 111–125.



CHAPTER FIVE DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS: A CRITICAL LOOK AT THE CONCEPT OF WESTERN VALUES IN FINNISH SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS PIA MIKANDER

Abstract In attempts to explain the world, Finnish school textbooks, just like other media, tend to use the dichotomy of West and the rest of the world. In The Idea of the West, Bonnett (2004) successfully shows that as long as the notion of ‘West’ has existed, the definitions of ‘Western’ have evolved, both within and outside the West. It refers not only to a geographical marker but to an assumed collection of ideas and ideologies such as democracy and human rights. In this chapter, the aim is to examine how these concepts are connected to the concept of West (or Europe) in school textbooks. The data consists of the textbooks in grades 5–9 published in Finland in geography, history and social studies in 2005– 2010. Inspired by the discourse theory analysis developed by Laclau and Mouffe (1985/2001), textbooks are seen as discursive documents that take part in the creation of objectivity. The analysis section consists of three parts. The first one focuses mostly on the definitions of the West and Western values as concepts, the way they emerge in descriptions such as that of Ancient Greece or the European Union. The analysis shows how differently the concepts of democracy and human rights can be tied to the concept of West. The second part discusses how the concepts of West and Western values are used in meetings with the ‘other,’ using history and social science textbook articulations as examples. The third part focuses on textbook descriptions of the future of the West and the concept of Western values.

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Introduction Europe’s highest peak is located in the Caucasus. A) What is it called? B) How high is it? C) Between which two nations is it located? D) Discuss why many nonetheless consider Mont Blanc in the Alps to be Europe’s highest peak. (Biologian ja maantiedon polku 5, 2008, p. 89)1

The quote above, from a grade 5 geography textbook, shows that the geographic concept of Europe is not only a matter of facts, but of opinions, too. It is easy to find the right answers to the first three questions in the text in the chapter (Mount Elbrus, 5,642 meters, Russia and Georgia). However, the answer to the last part (D) is not there to be found. The point can be assumed to be there in order to encourage independent thinking among the students, but what is the statement implying? The text presents a fact (that the highest peak of Europe is located in the Caucasus), then encourages the students to ponder on why “many” disagree with this fact. At issue here is the question of what Europe is, not according to the science of geography, but according to what “many people” think. It shows the ambiguity that is tied to the question of the borders of Europe. Furthermore, if the concept of Europe is difficult to define, defining the concept of the ‘West’ offers an even more challenging task, since it points not only to a geographical marker but also to an assumed collection of ideas and ideologies. Yet, there are several references to the concepts of the West and Western values, often as parallel concepts to ‘European values,’ in the Finnish school textbooks. These will be in focus in this chapter. In The Idea of the West, Bonnett (2004) shows that as long as the notion of ‘West’ has existed, the definitions of ‘Western’ have changed, both within the West itself and outside the West. As one of many examples, he points out how Christianity was seen as an important part of what it meant to be Western during the time when the Soviet Union, which stood for atheism, was the West’s ‘other.’ After the 1990s, when the ‘other’ came to be represented by the Muslim world, the secularism of ‘Western’ was highlighted. Bonnett’s work shows how fluid the concept of ‘West’ (and consequently, ‘Western values’) should be seen to be.

The Idea of the West in the Study of Textbooks Studies done on the role of textbooks in schools show that the textbooks are important and that they even make up the foremost source of

 1

All the quotes were translated from the original Finnish or Swedish by the author and later language checked by a professional translator

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teaching (Foster, 2011; Issit, 2004). This seems to be the case in Finland, too, where many teachers consider the school textbooks the primary source of reference, even more important than the curriculum guidelines. Differences however exist, for example, between school subjects (Atjonen et al., 2008; Heinonen, 2005). The role of textbooks can be considered particularly important in social studies, since its relationship with the academic disciplines tends to be complex (Børhaug, 2011). Andreotti and de Souza (2012) point out the need within education to analyze hegemonies that reproduce and maintain global inequalities. Their suggestion to use postcolonial critique seems fruitful in the study of the portrayal of the ‘West’ and the concept of ‘Western values’ in school textbooks. Writing school textbooks that attempt to explain the world is no easy task, considering that the world changes fast and continuously. However, there are no shortcuts; there is a need to start presenting the world through a multitude of perspectives in order for students to develop an understanding of the world that is not based on old stereotypes. This way, students can learn to challenge global colonial power. Textbooks should be developed in a direction that more accurately represents the current globalized world (Mikander & Holm, 2014; Pihl, 2009). International research shows that school textbooks in geography, history and social studies have historically reflected prejudices, even though blatant racism has faded since the 1960s (Graves, 1996; Marsden, 2001). Even without overtly offensive statements, however, prejudices and stereotypes have harmful effects. Although the negative attitudes in textbooks might be the same as those that flourish in other types of media and in society at large, school textbooks are in a special position considering that they are often widely distributed and legitimized by the state apparatus (Loftsdóttir, 2010). Several studies have shown that prejudices continue to prevail in school textbooks. Referring to several studies of textbooks in Sweden, Kamali (2005) shows how the books tend to take on a perspective of ‘us’ Westerners and portray other peoples selectively as the opposites of progressive, civilized Europeans. In descriptions of what the concept of European means, the focus is only on positive elements such as the Renaissance, revolutions and democracy, and almost never on wars, colonialism, slavery or genocide. As for Finland, a country celebrated for its PISA success in mathematics and science (Kupiainen, Hautamäki, & Karjalainen, 2009), there are some alarming signs concerning the lack of interest in social studies and society as a whole (Suoninen, Kupari, & Törmäkangas, 2010). As Alemanji, Johnson Longfor and Oskarsdóttir discuss in this volume,

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one may ask if success in the learning areas measured in PISA really cover what is needed for students to live and work in a society of people with different world views. The Finnish national core curriculum (Finnish National Board of Education, henceforth FNBE, 2004) states that all basic education should be based on a number of values, initially mentioning democracy, human rights and equality. The core curriculum does not define these values (Lampinen, 2013). The draft for the coming new curriculum also stresses that basic education is based on values such as respect for human rights and promoting democratic values (FNBE, 2014). The importance of these values needs to be stressed considering the newly reported study that shows that in an international study of 38 countries Finnish boys hold the most negative attitudes towards immigrants (YLE, 2014). Whether or not school textbooks can be seen as one of the main reasons behind negative attitudes, as suggested by Pudas (2013), they have an indisputable role as discursive documents that can be found in the school bags of a whole generation.

Method This study is part of a doctoral thesis, which is an analysis of a total of 70 Finnish textbooks for grades 5 to 9 (11–16-year-olds), when geography, history and social studies are taught in basic education. The analysis covers all the textbooks published in these subjects by the (then) six major publishing companies in Finland between 2005 and 2010. All the books were read and examined with regard to either a portrayal of all human beings as equal (as in accordance with the values of the Finnish core curriculum) or a portrayal of the West as superior. During the reading, articulations such as texts, pictures and assignments were categorized into subcategories such as war, culture, population and references to the concept of ‘West.’ This study is an analysis of the last-mentioned category. The articulations that somehow could be characterized as ideological definitions of the West or Europe were gathered into one document and analyzed. The following questions were asked: what are the definitions given to the concept of West or Europe? What is explicit, what is implicit? What ideological values (such as democracy and human rights) can be perceived to be attached to the concepts of ‘Western’ or ‘European’? The aim of schoolbooks is to synthesize information into generally regarded objective and useful pieces of information (Loftsdóttir, 2010, p. 81). However, some questions about objectivity emerged during the

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reading of the material, such as: How is this objectivity defined? Whose objectivity is it? These questions can be turned back to the material. At an early stage of the research, it became clear that the research would benefit from a discursive approach. There is a need to see the school textbooks as documents of our culture and time; they cannot be seen apart from society at large. In the words of Loftsdóttir (2010, pp. 22– 23): “It is important to see schoolbooks not merely as discourses that create images that are influential in their social setting, but as being derived from, being a part of and interacting with their social settings.” Textbooks are in society, come from society, but also influence society by creating a version of what can be seen as objective knowledge. The discourse analysis used here has mostly been influenced by Laclau and Mouffe (1985/2001). In what they call discourse theory analysis, they see the world not as a reality existing out there, needing to be uncovered in order to be understood. Instead, they see us as constantly creating an understanding of what is real and true in our talk, text and actions. They call this creating objectivity. One might argue that the formulations quoted as examples of discourses in this chapter are not much different from articulations in, for instance, the news or other media. For discourse analysis, there are no hierarchies between documents—official documents as well as internet discussions are equally valuable as materials since they are all constructed within a discourse (Börjesson & Palmblad, 2007). Just like other materials, however, textbooks are not only constructed within a discourse, they also reproduce discourses. With this in mind, the fact that school textbooks are distributed to and read by all students in Finland make them powerful as producers of what is seen as objective. As an example of how objectivity is created, one might consider how some of the school textbooks in geography portray ‘culture spheres’ that are marked by circling areas that divide the world into fixed culture categories. In one textbook, the students are asked to color a world map according to these culture spheres. In doing so, the textbook creates objectivity—the clear distinctions between culture spheres as objective knowledge. However, other geography textbooks portray a completely different view of the concept of culture, such as suggesting that all cultures are made up of mixes of meetings between people. The need for a critical examination regarding the concept of cultures is further discussed by Schatz and Niemi (in this volume).

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What is Europe? What is the ‘West’? Europe is dominated by Western culture, which often highlights equality between people and people’s possibilities of acting freely, of their own will. It is part of the Western culture that people have the right to a high standard of living. This means, among other things, that people have access to enough food, good healthcare and an opportunity for a good education. This is the case in many European countries. (Jäljillä 5, 2008, p. 127)

Even if the concepts ‘European’ and ‘Western’ could be described and discussed at length as separate phenomena, they are often taken to mean the same thing in the studied textbooks. An example is the quote above, which states that equality, freedom and a high standard of living are typical for Western culture. Many textbooks are not this clear in their explanations of what Western or European values entail. In addition to the textbook descriptions of what Western values mean, it is interesting to analyze how these values are linked to the concept of West. The following is an attempt to map out what values the concepts of European and Western point to, and how. To start with, the discussion in the textbooks about the enlargement of the EU can be taken as a case in point. The following quote is an example of how the difference between the ‘East’ and Europe can be portrayed: Turkey’s roots are in the East, but its gaze is turned towards Europe. This is expressed, for example, by Turkey’s wish to become a member state in the European Union EU. (Koulun biologia ja maantieto 6, 2005, p. 103)

The quote suggests that having one’s “roots” in the East and aspiring to become European is somehow problematic. However, what this all means remains unexplained, even though the quoted geography textbook is used for grade 6 (12–13-year-olds). Other textbooks have more detailed descriptions of what this difference entails, such as the following social studies textbook (grade 9): Turkey has not yet been accepted as a member, even though it has expressed its wish to join for years. Turkey does not yet fulfill the criteria needed for new members. Turkey has sought to improve its human rights situation and abolished the death penalty. (Yhteiskunta NYT, 2008, p. 225)

And this grade 8 geography textbook:

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Turkey has sought to develop its social conditions, such as freedom of speech and gender equality, so that the country could become a member of the European Union in the future (KM Maailma, 2010, p. 135).

One thing that the three quotes share is the notion that Turkey “wants” to become either “European” or a member of the EU, but is not quite there yet. This suggests a possibility for countries not considered European to become European by adopting the right values. Bonnett (2004) shows how the borders of the West have been fluid, and even includes the vision that the whole world could be ‘westernized.’ The following two last quotes offer definitions that can be seen as examples of what being European or Western means, in the form of criteria needed for EU membership. Human rights, the abolishment of the death penalty, freedom of speech and gender equality are tangible concepts. A social studies book describes the values of the EU in concrete terms, as peace, democracy and human rights: The member states are not alike, but instead they vary greatly when it comes to history, culture and the structure of society. Still, they are committed to the same basic values; peace, democracy and respecting human rights (Yhteiskunnan tuulet, 2010, p. 131).

Connecting the above-mentioned values with the EU member states is in no way surprising; they are the same values echoed in the founding principles of the EU (European Union, 2012). More thought-provoking is the way the values are related to the countries. In this particular quote, the countries are said to be committed to these values. Some textbooks, however, seem to assume that rather than a commitment these values are inherent for EU members, and part of what Europe or the West “is.” Consider how the following grade 5 history textbook creates an image of what ‘Westernness’ means and how it is depicted as a success story from Ancient Greece to today’s Europe: We are all partly Greek (headline). Of the ancient peoples, the Greeks have affected our lives the most. We, too, are in many ways ெGreek.” We believe that democracy, the power of the people, is right. We vote, go to the theater at night, admire sport heroes and beautiful works of art. (Kauan sitten – matka maailman historiaan, 2006, p. 54)

And: The Greeks also thought differently from the Egyptians or the Mesopotamians. They wanted to feel free and they wanted to choose for

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Not only are ‘we’ the readers expected to identify with the Greeks (or, to be precise, to the free adult male citizens of Athens), but the Greek mindset is presented as radically different from that of the Egyptians or Mesopotamians. Can anyone really prove that they did not like to think for themselves? The same textbook goes on to describe the war between Ancient Greece and Persia (for a more detailed analysis, see Mikander, 2012). This war is described in the grade 5 history textbook as a very decisive event for the whole concept of ‘Westernness,’ as can be shown in the following extract: If Persia had won the war, the way of life in the Greek city-states would have been over. Many of the inventions, artworks and buildings of the Greeks would never have been born. The thought of democracy, the right to think and speak freely, would have been forgotten. The world would have become very different without them. (Kauan sitten – matka maailman historiaan, 2006, p. 74)

The above-mentioned quote clearly suggests that only in the West could values such as democracy and human rights have emerged. The image of Westernness as a success story of democracy and human rights leaves out the dark side of what Europe or the West has stood for throughout history; this includes colonialism and fascism. These are not seen as part of what is essentially Western in the way democracy and human rights are. Another way of describing the link between values such as democracy and Europe is seen in the following geography textbook for grade 5: It is seen as important to take care of things together, or democratically. The standards of living vary between different states and regions of Europe. The European Union stresses the importance of human rights. Examples of human rights are the right for everyone to a home, to food and to a possibility of going to school. The rights of children to play, go to school and live a happy life also need to be defended (Pisara 5, 2010, p. 57).

At first glance, the quote looks quite similar to the other descriptions of European values. However, the very last words of the quote create a different image of the relation between the EU and the values mentioned. By referring to the values not as inherent, but as important to defend, the

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message is clear: there is a need to be active to defend the rights; they cannot be taken for granted to represent the West.

Western Values and Meeting with the Other— Then and Now The section above discussed how the West is presented in explicit terms. However, what is considered Western can also be implicit. This can be seen in the description of its opposite, as in meetings between the West and the rest of the world. History textbooks are obviously full of these descriptions, not least because the portrayal of the world outside Europe is often linked directly to the confrontation between other places and Europe, such as events that are still often called “voyages of discovery.” While there have been attempts to turn the focus in history textbooks toward the treatment of colonised peoples, the “discoverers” are still seen as heroes; importantly, there are very few links drawn between the atrocities of colonisation and the continued extraction of natural sources and exploitation of labor in the South performed by ‘Western’ multinational companies today. As an example of how it is possible to mention atrocities performed by the West but turn the focus to something different, consider the following quote, a text accompanying a picture in a grade 7 history textbook: In addition to the violent conquests, the Europeans made contracts with African chiefs. They served as local chiefs under the Europeans. Samson Dido from Cameroon assumed a European style of clothing all the way down to the walking stick. (Kronikka 7, 2008, p. 147)

The text is accompanied by a picture which shows the person in question, Samson Dido, dressed in European clothes. One can ask what thought the three sentences leave in the mind of the reader—is it the initial mentioning of violent conquests, or is it the local chief dressed in “funny” European attire? The picture and the text can be seen as amusing, belittling colonial violence and its consequences. The fact that the local chief Samson Dido was dressed in European clothes could obviously be there to show an example of how colonialism deprived some peoples of their culture and tradition. However, here that point is not made; his clothes are rather seen as a comic element. The same textbook offers a similar belittling attitude in the following description of Japan: The Europeans had been a little amused by the Japanese people’s intense desire to become European. The Japanese sought to become more perfect

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than the Europeans themselves… To solve their shortage of raw material, the Japanese decided to adopt the European model: Japan began to acquire colonies. (Kronikka 7, 2008, p. 162)

This description can hardly be seen as an attempt to teach students about the horrors of colonialism. Instead, one can expect the students to laugh along with the Europeans described in the text. The second sentence, about being more perfect than the Europeans, seems to entail some kind of sarcasm that may be difficult for young readers to perceive. It is not easy to see the purpose of such descriptions. However, the following two extracts from other textbooks about the same topic make clearer statements about the ugliness of colonialism and the world view that allowed for it: The Westerners were complacent and thought that their way of life was much better than those of people overseas. Because of this, they started educating people in the colonies on the Western lifestyle. The people in the colonies were not seen to have the same human value as the conquerors. (Kaleidoskooppi 7, 2010, p. 98)

And: The Europeans justified their conquests by civilizing indigenous peoples. They saw them as inferior since the countries lacked industries and the people didn’t have Christianity, the “right” customs or culture. The idea that Europeans were superior to peoples of other continents and that they thus needed to civilize others is called the white man’s burden. (Aikalainen 7, 2009, p. 122)

The quotes show how the arrogant attitude that was prevalent in Europe during the age of colonialism can be described in a school textbook. Interestingly, the Europeans are here referred to as “they,” while they were known as “us” in one of the earlier quoted descriptions of (democratic) Ancient Greece. These are portrayals of Europeans hundreds and thousands of years ago. However, there are also descriptions of Europeans meeting ‘others’ in today’s world. As an example of how nonWesterners can be portrayed differently from Westerners, consider the following two quotes from a textbook describing the borders of and within the EU. Since the border crossings have become more flexible and there is less control, there are now worries that terrorists, drug smugglers and other

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criminals will take advantage of this and move about more freely in unlawful business. (Uppdrag Europa, 2009, p. 37) .

And: Finland and Austria will also have to act as gatekeepers. When there is instability, there is always somebody taking advantage of the opportunity to become rich in illegal ways, such as by smuggling weapons, drugs or people. This becomes sad for those who are labeled as criminals simply for the sake of their looks or their nationality. (Uppdrag Europa, 2009, p. 78)

What the two quotes from one geography textbook have in common is the implicit notion that people who come from outside of the EU can be seen as potential criminals. However, there are many things said in the quotes that need some additional disentangling. For instance, the first quote involves a statement on being worried about “terrorists, drug smugglers and other criminals.” The sentence is impersonal, leaving out the actor. Who is worried or supposed to be worried? The Finnish state, Finnish citizens, or who? Leaving out the actor creates a sensation of a norm; it makes sense to be worried. In Ahonen’s study (2000), this is typical for Finnish textbooks in social studies: events are simply portrayed as taking place; there are rarely any active subjects, either in terms of institutions or groups of individuals. Moreover, as Ahonen shows, values are also being transmitted in the name of this kind of ‘objectivity.’ Here, the value transmitted is that ‘we’ are always potentially at risk of being abused by ‘them.’ Also, the last sentence in the second quote about criminality can be seen as a way to blame racism in Europe on the “criminals from the outside.” It suggests that racism (labeling some people as criminals because of their looks or nationality) is to be seen as a product of ‘their’ bad behavior and not, for instance, on institutional racism in receiving countries such as Finland. Earlier research (Mietola, 2001) shows how textbooks portray racism in Finland as a marginal phenomenon related to criminality, not to Finnish society. The notion of Europe being a ‘good player’ in the world is not hard to find in the following quote: Most of the European countries are wealthy. Some typical things for the continent are a high standard of living, good healthcare and a high quality of education. Europe is one of the world’s economic powers, and the aid it provides for many developing countries is important. (Jäljillä 6, 2008, p. 45)

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Development aid is often brought up when it comes to economic inequality in the world. Trade agreements or the extractions of raw materials from poorer countries, which consist of much larger volumes, are not mentioned. The concept of ‘us’ being good players in the world is also shown in the following quote about UN peacekeepers. Consider how differently the reasons for sending troops can be described depending on the sending country: Finnish peacekeepers have been involved in Suez since the beginning of the peacekeeping operations in 1956 …. Finland’s active involvement was based on our country’s international status as a non-aligned and neutral country …. Most of the peacekeepers come from developing countries such as India and Nigeria. The developing countries like to send out peacekeepers because the United Nations pays retroactively for the costs related to peacekeeping. (Yhteiskunta NYT, 2008, p. 79)

The active Finnish presence in peacekeeping is described as a virtue, while the reason for India and Nigeria to send peacekeepers around the world is to earn money. These small, subtle articulations in the texts can be seen to create and uphold a vision of ‘us’ as more socially responsible than ‘them.’

The Strength of the West Only 11% of the world’s six billion inhabitants live in Europe. We often see the world in a very “Euro-centered” way. In the future, the world’s economic and demographic center of gravity will be shifting beyond Europe and the United States. (Aikalainen 8, 2009, p. 158)

While focusing on a valid point, the quote above raises some questions. It shows how intertwined the textbook sees Europe and the US—first, only Europe is mentioned, then the US is included in the argument. The shift in the “center of gravity” of the world is presented in a pragmatic, not alarming, light. Bonnett (2004) shows how Western civilization has been simultaneously pronounced to be all-conquering and defeated, unstoppable and doomed, for instance, in academic literature throughout the last hundred years. In the quote above, the “center of gravity” concerns economy and people—not, for instance, military power. However, several of the textbook quotes that discuss the concept of Western values are found in chapters that describe military conflicts in today’s world, such as the September 11th attacks in New York and the following wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The history textbook descriptions of these events seem to offer a new arena for the discussion about Western values and the

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future. Some books construct an image of Western values being under attack (see Mikander, 2014). One textbook does this in a very explicit way, by linking the concept of Western values with capitalism, as in the following about September 11th in New York: The attacks led to the death of 3,000 innocent people, people from many different countries belonging to several religions and language groups. But the attacks did not manage to crush the Western world. Within the economy, “business as usual” still rules. Even though the aerial industry suffered hard losses, stricter control made it safer to fly. (Historia 1900– talet, 2008, p. 267)

Here, the victims of the attacks are first described very broadly, as people from “many different countries” belonging to several faiths and language groups. Still, the next sentence presupposes that the target was indeed the “Western world.” By referring to the prevailing economy and aerial industry, it shows that the Western world was not “crushed” by the attacks. This particular history textbook makes a strong connection between the West and capitalist economy in another chapter, too. Describing the fall of the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union, it concludes that: It was not with the help of weapons that the Western world became the winners of the Cold War. It was the Western economic system, capitalism, or the market economy that turned out to be stronger than the communist planned economic system. (Historia 1900–talet, 2008, p. 161)

Here, the key to what is Western is not democracy, human rights or equality, but capitalism. Bonnett (2004) has pointed out how the linking of the West with capitalism is a fairly new phenomenon (one hundred years ago, socialists saw the revolution particularly as a Western project). He also suggests that the idea of “Western triumph through neoliberal capitalism” is “a utopian political discourse” (Bonnett, 2004, p. 123). His examples include Russia and China, capitalist countries that lack democracy, but he also points out how democracy is being compromised in the ‘West’ today. Another history textbook discusses the same events but concentrates more on the development that has taken place in the West in the aftermath of 9/11, focusing on the diminishing respect for democracy, as in the description of how the fact that people opposed the war in Iraq did not stop their governments from going to war:

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Chapter Five However, the governments did not heed their citizens. For instance, Spain sent its troops to Iraq, even though almost half of the Spanish people opposed the attack. (Kaleidoskooppi 8, 2008, p. 178)

If the West is to be defined as a center for democracy, freedom and human rights, the weakening of these and the need to defend them should be mentioned. The last quote offers an opening into this kind of thinking while the ones mentioned earlier, focusing uncritically on the West as ெwinners” in the world, can hardly be seen to do so.

Conclusions The way school textbooks create objectivity matters. Through descriptions of events ranging from ancient wars via colonialist clashes to today’s conflicts, and from descriptions of the Ancient Greeks to today’s EU states, the attempt here has been to analyze how textbooks discuss the concepts of Western values. In the textbook examples discussed here, there is a notion that democracy and human rights can be taken to be part of what it means to be ‘Western.’ The risk attached to this is that these values are taken for granted, overlooking the fact that they need to be defended, over and over. It would be important for students to thoroughly learn about the dark side of the history of Europe. This would mean not only presenting facts about historical periods such as colonialism or fascism but also to look at how they are presented. This chapter has shown that Westerners can be described as ‘us’ when the focus is on developing democracy, but as ‘them’ when the focus is on colonialism. This suggests that there is a need for a more critical presentation in history textbooks of not only history but also the present. The fact that ‘us’ sending out peacekeepers is seen as a good deed while ‘them’ doing the same thing is seen as a way of earning money is shown as an example of this. Textbooks should ask critical questions, not provide statements that consolidate old stereotypical views of the world. This, together with the suggestion made in the Introduction to this volume, that teachers in training should be taught to analyze textbooks critically, is crucial for providing students with the knowledge and skills that they will need in their future lives.



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Kamali, M. (2005). Bortom vi och dom: Teoretiska reflektioner om makt, integration och strukturell diskriminering. Stockholm, Sweden: Fritzes. Kupiainen, S., Hautamäki, J., & Karjalainen, T. (2009). The Finnish education system and PISA. Ministry of Education Publications 2009:46. Retrieved from http://minedu.fi/export/sites/default/OPM/ Julkaisut/2009/liitteet/opm46.pdf?lang=en Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (2001). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso. (Original work published 1985). Lampinen, J. (2013). Vähemmistöt oppikirjoissa – erilaisuutta etäältä tarkasteltuna? Etnisten ja kansallisten vähemmistöjen sekä alkuperäiskansojen huomioiminen peruskoulun 5., 6. ja 7. luokan äidinkielen ja kirjallisuuden, historian, maantiedon, uskonnon ja elämänkatsomustiedon oppikirjoissa 2000–luvulla. Ihmisoikeusliiton selvitys 1/2013. Retrieved from http://ihmisoikeusliitto.fi/wpcontent/uploads/2014/10/Oppikirjaselvitys_Ihmisoikeusliitto_2013.pdf Loftsdóttir, K. (2010). Deconstructing the Eurocentric perspective: Studying “Us” and the “Other” in history books. In T. Helgason & S. Lässig (Eds.), Opening the mind or drawing boundaries? History texts in Nordic schools (pp. 21–32). Eckert.Die Schriffenreihe 122. Göttingen, Germany: V&R unipress. Marsden, W. E. (2001). The school textbook. Geography, history and social studies. London, UK: Woburn Press. Mietola (2001). Itseä ja erilaista oppimaan – Erilaisuus peruskoulun oppikirjoissa. Nuorisotutkimus 2, 3–20. Mikander, P. (2012). Othering and the construction of the West: The description of two historical events in Finnish school textbooks. Critical Literacy: Theories and Practices, 6(1), 31–45. —. (2014). Western values under threat? Perceptions of “Us” and “Them” in history textbooks in Finnish schools. In M. Vuorinen, N. Kotilainen, & A.-M. Huhtinen (Eds), Binaries in battle: Representations of division and conflict (126–140). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Mikander, P. & Holm, G. (2014). Constructing threats and a need for control: Textbook descriptions of a growing, moving world population. Review of International Geographical Education Online, 4(1), 8–25. Pihl, J. (2009). Ethno-nationalism and education. In S. Alghasi, T. Hylland Eriksen, & H. Ghorashi (Eds.), Paradoxes of cultural recognition. Perspectives from Northern Europe (pp. 111–133). Farnham, UK: Ashgate.

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Pudas, A.-K. (2013). Investigating possibilities to develop textbooks to implement global education in basic education instruction. IARTEM, 5(2), 1–22. Suoninen A., Kupari, P., & Törmäkangas, K. (2010). Nuorten yhteiskunnalliset tiedot, osallistuminen ja asenteet. Kansainvälisen ICCS 2009 -tutkimuksen päätulokset. Retrieved from https://ktl.jyu.fi/julkaisut/julkaisuluettelo/julkaisut/2010/d093 YLE News. (2014, November 1). Racial intolerance spreading among Finnish youth, professor warns. YLE News. Retrieved from http://yle.fi/uutiset/racial_intolerance_spreading_among_finnish_youth _professor_warns/7592303

Textbooks quoted Hieta, P., Häikiö, V., Johansson, M., Putus-Hilasvuori, T., & WSOY Oppimateriaalit Oy. (2009). Aikalainen 7. Helsinki, Finland: WSOY. Kohvakka, V., Ojakoski, M., Pönni, J., Raassina-Merikanto, T., & WSOY Oppimateriaalit Oy. (2009). Aikalainen 8. Helsinki, Finland: WSOY. Agge, K., Ahonen, T., Heiskanen, S., Juuti, K., Kesler, M., Purme, J., Uitto, A., & Edita. (2008). Biologian ja maantiedon polku 5. Helsinki, Finland: Edita Ahlskog, H., Sandholm, S., & Söderström & C:o Förlags Ab. (2008). Historia 1900-talet. Borgå, Finland: tt-urex. Lindgrén, A., Marttinen, S., Sukselainen, A., Paso, S., Pudas, A., & Kustannusosakeyhtiö Tammi. (2007). Jäljillä 5. Helsinki: Tammi. Ertimo, M., Laitakari, A., Maskonen, T., Seppänen, K., Tulivuori, J., & Kustannusosakeyhtiö Tammi. (2008). Jäljillä 6. Vammala, Finland: Vammalan Kirjapaino. Halavaara, S., Lehtonen, J-P., West, P., & Kustannusosakeyhtiö Tammi. (2010). Kaleidoskooppi 7. Helsinki, Finland: Tammi. Halavaara, S., Lehtonen, J-P., West, P., & Kustannusosakeyhtiö Tammi. (2008). Kaleidoskooppi 8. Helsinki, Finland: Tammi. Hanste, T., Probst, I., Aarras-Saari, R., Juutinen, J., & Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö. (2006). Kauan sitten – matka maailman historiaan. Helsinki, Finland: WSOY. Leinonen, M., Martikainen, A., Nyberg, T., Veistola, S., Jortikka, S., & Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. (2010). KM Maailma 8. Keuruu, Finland: Otavan Kirjapaino. Arjanne, S., Leinonen, M., Nyberg, T., Palosaari, M., Vehmas, P., & Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. (2005). Koulun biologia ja maantieto 6. Keuruu, Helsinki: Otavan Kirjapaino.

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Lähteenmäki, M., Troberg, M., & Edita. (2008). Kronikka 7. Helsinki, Finland: Edita Cantell, H., Jutila, H., Laiho, H., Lavonen, J., Pekkala, E., Saari H., & WSOYpro Oy. (2010). Pisara 5. Helsinki, Finland: WSOY. Arohonka, J., Jutila, H., Kankaanrinta, I.-K., Kytömäki, J., & Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö. (2009). Uppdrag Europa 8. Borgå, Finland: tturex. Honkanen, T., Marjomäki, H., Pakola, E., Rajala, K., & Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. (2006). Yhteiskunnan tuulet 9. Keuruu, Finland: Otavan Kirjapaino. Putus-Hilasvuori, T., Ukkonen, J., Ojakoski, M., & Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö. (2008). Yhteiskunta NYT 9. Helsinki, Finland: WSOY.



CHAPTER SIX HOLOCAUST EDUCATION: AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO ANTIRACISM EDUCATION? A STUDY OF A HOLOCAUST TEXTBOOK USED IN 8TH GRADE IN AN INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL IN FINLAND AMINKENG A. ALEMANJI, RITA JOHNSON LONGFOR AND EDDA ÓSKARSDÓTTIR

Abstract Due to the complexities of the terms race and racism, there is need for diverse methodologies/approaches to be introduced in educating against racism. An example of such approaches involves highlighting the ideological relationship between racism—as a systematic concept of oppression based on power and power abuse—and the Holocaust—a historic moment of human history, when using racially developed frames, grave acts of injustices were committed by the Nazis against the Jew, Sinti, and Roma people and others whom they considered to be subhuman, inferior or dangerous. Previous research in secondary schools has suggested that Holocaust Education can contribute to and develop pupils’ awareness of human rights issues, genocide, stereotyping and racism. This chapter takes this suggestion further by showing how this can be realised. In this chapter, grade 8 students in two focus groups and their teacher discuss how a textbook on Holocaust Education could be a valuable resource for antiracism education. They also analyse specific aspects of the textbook. A thematic approach to discourses as proposed by Gee’s (2013)

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and van Dijk’s (2012) discourse analytical methods is employed in the analysis of the data. The findings emphasise the need for discussing the Holocaust as a form of antiracism as well as the possibilities of using the textbook under scrutiny in educating about intersecting topics like human rights, the Holocaust and antiracism.

Introduction The Holocaust is a sad aspect of human history whose scars remain somewhat visible in our present world and must not be forgotten. This is because it serves as a reminder that othering and racial discrimination can have severe consequences on human interaction. The biggest challenge that educators face is how to teach the Holocaust due to its sensitive nature. In other words, what approaches are suitable in what context and by whom? This chapter examines how through the use of the concept of intersectionality (Ahmed, 2000), educators can use the concepts of racism and neo-racism (Balibar & Wallerstein, 1991; Goldberg, 2002) to teach about the Holocaust. Intersectionality in this study is employed as a conceptual tool that brings together different human variables like skin colour, gender, class and religion by identifying what binds these variables together. It also seeks to highlight that people from these different variables can suffer from one thing in common—racial discrimination. Thus intersecting their experiences may be helpful in understanding their plight and finding possible solutions to their problems. Racism to us engulfs all forms of discrimination (e.g. skin colour, religion, sexuality, class and gender) resulting from othering, injustice and inequality and the abuse of power. Dervin, Hahl, Härkönen and Layne (this volume) remind us that there is a long history of fighting against stereotypes and prejudice. We chose this approach because the Holocaust represents one very ‘concrete’ outcome of racial discrimination in the history of mankind. The Holocaust and other acts of genocide are born out of othering and the need to protect a certain socio-political hierarchical order. Such otherness is often constructed along racial lines while the inhuman acts that follow are enhanced through propaganda that calls for the need to create a single racial identity by eliminating others through the most inhuman means. This chapter analyses a case study conducted in a social studies class in an international school in Helsinki, Finland. The case study focuses on how a textbook on the Holocaust was used to teach about antiracism. The data for the study consists of interviews with the teacher, a focus group with 8th grade students and an empirical analysis of the textbook. The chapter answers the following questions: How can a textbook on the

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Holocaust serve as a textbook on antiracism education? What are the features of a good textbook for teaching about antiracism? Commencing with defining and contextualising the various thematic frameworks (antiracism and Holocaust education), the chapter then discusses the case study by proposing a textbook analysis and the empirical analysis of the data.

Holocaust Education in the Finnish Context The definition of Holocaust education differs across countries as each country’s history of anti-Semitism and collaboration or resistance during World War II are determining factors that play a great role in people’s understanding of the concept of the Holocaust (Gundare & Batelaan, 2003). As a result of such diverse histories and the need for concepts to be localised, Gundare and Batelaan (2003) argue that Holocaust education is not, and cannot be, the same everywhere. Thus, it is vital to employ our understanding of local human atrocities like genocides to attempt to comprehend the Holocaust. Comparing the Holocaust to other genocides and crimes against humanity may enable learners to understand key similarities and differences between these events. Such an understanding is important because the core of both the Holocaust and the genocides is rooted in gross racial discrimination as well as gross human rights violations (Pingel, 2014). As a result, education on genocides may contribute to a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and vice versa. Gross (2011, p. 73) argues that “the Holocaust has become a metaphor for atrocity and genocide”. Zygmunt Bauman in Modernity and the Holocaust (1989) points out that the Holocaust was the consequence of bureaucratic and rational features of modern Western societies, whereby modernity became a requirement for the expression of a particular genocidal form of racism. Being a metaphor for atrocity and genocide makes Holocaust education accessible and comprehensible in most parts of the world as genocides and human atrocities are, in a sense, ‘universal’. Similarly, Holocaust studies in China could make use of the examples of the Nanjing massacre (1937), during which Japanese troops massacred inhabitants of the Chinese city of Nanjing. Students’ comprehension can be facilitated by highlighting that human injustice has happened elsewhere. The same can be said for most of Sub-Saharan Africa, or Africa in general, with reference to for example the 1994 Rwandan genocide (the massacre of Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority of Rwanda) and for Europe, regarding the Holocaust.

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According to Short and Reed (2004) in Issues in Holocaust Education the aim of Holocaust education is to “inoculate the generality of the population against racist and anti-Semitic propaganda and thereby restrict its appeal to a disaffected and politically insignificant rump” (p. 6–7). In doing so, Short and Reed (Ibid.) situate racism as a core element of Holocaust education. Furthermore, Dervin (2014) asks: “could the teaching of the Holocaust fall under the teaching of e.g. multicultural or intercultural educations, which are quite popular in the Nordic countries as they become more heterogeneous?” We argue in the affirmative, drawing evidence from different sources, to uphold that the Holocaust cannot be an isolated part of human history, as its core concepts—othering, discrimination and power abuse—are similar to other notions such as slavery, colonialism and racism. Gross (2011) asserts that Holocaust education is an integral part of global human rights and antiracism education as it educates about the use and abuse of power and the roles and responsibilities of individuals, organisations and nations when confronted with human rights violations. As “a rare, yet significant and reliable, test of the hidden possibilities of modern society” (Bauman, 1997, p. 12), Holocaust education can help students develop an understanding of the ramifications of racialisation in any society. Holocaust education in Finland is a fairly new area of studies as only in 2010 the Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE) gave specific instructions to introduce Holocaust teaching into the national basic education and upper secondary education curricula (Dervin, 2014). The first original Finnish language textbook on the Holocaust swiftly followed—Holokausti: Tapahtumat ja tulkinnat (The Holocaust: Events and Interpretations) was published in 2010 (Ibid.). A document entitled Education on the Holocaust and on AntiSemitism: An Overview and Analysis of Educational Approaches by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE, 2006) summarises the state of affairs in some European countries regarding Holocaust education, along with its successes and challenges. The document also helps to locate Holocaust education in the curriculum in Finland: The subject is taught within the framework of a history course focusing on European history during the 1930s and 1940s, and it is also mentioned during lessons on the establishment of the State of Israel and the political situation in the Middle East. The Holocaust also features in literature, ethics, and religion courses. Among the literature material covered is The Diary of Anne Frank. Approximately 2–3 hours are allocated to teaching

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about the Holocaust. Students learn about the topic first at the age of 14 and then in upper secondary school at the age 16–17. (OSCE, 2006, p. 70)

Although the effectiveness of such claims remains to be investigated, it is important to note that there is still room to improve or develop this educational scheme in Finland by training teachers to effectively teach such a sensitive topic. Besides offering special courses focusing on the Holocaust to students studying history, philosophy, ethics and theology at universities (OSCE, 2006), more courses such as a three-week introductory course of Holocaust and Genocide Studies offered at the Helsinki Summer School in 2012 and 2013 (Dervin, 2014) are instrumental in the development of Holocaust education in Finland.

Antiracism Education in Finland Antiracism education through the Holocaust education approach is a challenge, with potentials, that could be explored in Finland. However, this cannot be done without an understanding of the concept of race and racism. “Races and racisms are historically linked to the history and consequences of colonial encounters” (Balibar & Wallerstein, 1991, p. 902). Racism is about some people having the power to use racialising and essentialising ideas of different people and cultures against some other people (Rastas, 2009). Racism as prejudice and power (Hancock, 2000; Petrova, 2002) has changed from the old racism of slavery, segregation, apartheid, lynching and systematic discrimination to white superiority feelings and explicit derogation in public discourse and everyday conversation (van Dijk, 2000). The major change that has occurred in the conceptualisation of racism is a growing realisation that race is not a biological or natural system of genetic difference but it is socially constructed (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). Antiracist efforts that fail to interrogate variables beyond skin colour (like gender, religion, sexuality) may often replicate and reinforce the subordination of other oppressed minorities or discriminated groups (like females, LGBTs, Muslims, Jews) (Crenshaw, 1991). An individual’s identity cannot be limited to any singular identity marker (Dervin, 2012), such as black or tall. Considering that humans possess several identities like black, female, Muslim, lesbian or mother, it is imperative to examine and discuss racism through the lens of ‘new racism’ (Lentin, Titley, & Younge, 2011; van Dijk, 2000). Van Dijk (2000) and Lentin et al. (2011) argue that in ‘new racism’ (also referred to as neo-racism; Balibar, 2002; Goldberg, 2002), minorities are not only

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biologically inferior but different in terms of religion, sexuality, gender, nationality, etc. As a socially constructed concept, there is hope that it can be deconstructed and unlearned through education. With the issue of racism eminent in almost every society today, schools are arguably one of the most important institutions where antiracism discourse should be strongly encouraged. Antiracism involves actively confronting racism in all of its manifestations through peaceful actions (Crosby, 2009). Antiracism perspectives represent the ideas central in critical interculturalism and multiculturalism (Banks, 2008). This means that antiracism takes a bold step further in its challenge of social injustice. Dei (1996) defines antiracism education as any or all forms of progressive education that “questions power relations in the school and society, recognises the importance of personal experience and lived realities as a source of knowledge, and explores the perspectives of different groups in society” (p. 1). Power relations here have to do with the “privilege” and “supremacy” of the “white man” over the “non-white” or “the other” and the marginalisation and discrimination of, for example, gays, Muslims and special needs individuals by the majority who constitute or represent the mainstream ideology. Dealing with social justice makes antiracism education very politically inclined. Most importantly, antiracism education encourages participants to be actively engaged agents of social change by identifying and rejecting ideologies, structures and institutionalised practices that produce power and wrongly distribute privilege and disadvantages (Banks, 2008). The failure of contemporary literature on race and racism to adequately discuss anti-Semitism exposes a noticeable gap in race and racism as over the past two centuries anti-Semitism has been a central theme in racial discourses (Back & Solomos, 2000). However, in designing its systems of governance every country approaches these issues differently, while others may choose to ignore it with varying degrees of success. Finland is often ranked high in terms of the level of low inequality as a result of its social welfare policies that ensure a level of income equality, quality education for all and accessible healthcare (Grubb, 2007). Our experiences of life in Finland fall short of this ‘glorious’ assertion, as inequality in Finland is visible to any critical-minded person. It must be noted that even though the education system of Finland is rated among the best in the world (Ibid.), it must be questioned what areas are evaluated and why some areas are not evaluated. PISA for example lays emphasis on reading, mathematics and science (OECD, 2011). This test of students’ learning output is fast becoming irrelevant today as learning output alone cannot define a successful learning experience. Today there is a great need for students to

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be interculturally competent so that they can understand and work in harmony with people who may have different worldviews. Students also need to appreciate differences in a positive manner in order to be agents of social change (Dei, 2003). In addition, despite these positive qualities, school in Finland can be a difficult place for some children, solely because of racism, as some teachers fail to recognise racism in schools (Rastas, 2009). With the complexity of the concept of racism, the Finnish teacher training sector is struggling to meet the challenges involved in antiracism education because of two arguable reasons. First, despite the fact that racism is not a novel concept in Finland, much research has not been done to understand fully this concept and how to implement antiracism education in Finnish classrooms. Secondly, the EU 2001 policy change from an emphasis on racism to culture has not favoured these concepts as it makes both concepts blurred. Egharevb (2011) observes that there is a need for the enhancement of educational awareness training in order to help the general Finnish public to move beyond traditional Eurocentric attitudes, of supremacy over “others,” to gain an appreciation of the cultures (of the “other”) and of the contribution of immigrant minorities in Finland. In addition, in the 2003 Finnish National Core Curriculum for Upper Secondary Schools, educating for intercultural awareness is sprinkled around different subject areas such as religion, geography, ethics, history, music and mother tongue and literature (FNBE, 2003). The primary goal is to educate students to respect the “diversity of cultures,” human rights, equality and democracy. As policy, this sounds good but the problem arises when policy fails to provide guidance on how such a goal should be interpreted and taught in schools. The job of interpreting and employing this policy falls into the hands of teachers who are unequipped to handle such sensitive topics (Rastas, 2009). To avoid promoting a certain powerbalance, attention must be paid to overgeneralisations and hidden ideologies in discussing intercultural education (Schatz & Niemi, this volume). In the above-mentioned curriculum, the word “antiracism” fails to appear even once and the word “racism” is used only twice under the subject of ethics (FNBE, 2003). This illustrates how minimally this area is emphasised in Finland despite the dire need for antiracism education in schools. It will not be wrong to argue that since antiracism education confronts the concept of power (Banks, 2008; Dei, 1996; Lentin et al., 2011; Rastas, 2009; Vincent, 2003), and a curriculum (as conveyed in the textbook under study) is a product of a specific ideology and ‘culture’ constructed to serve the interest of the hegemony (Apple, 2004), the Finnish National Core Curriculum of 2003 is doing little in challenging the

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structures that reproduce and sustain racism through the lens of antiracism education. Textbooks are one way of teaching and influencing pupils’ learning. According to Dervin, Hahl, Härkönen and Layne (this volume), textbooks are essential breeding grounds for essentialism. Like media and other videos, textbooks in the social sciences (social studies, history, or geography) contribute to developing a concept of self and others (van Dijk, 2005). Unlike textbooks in other subjects such as the ‘hard’ sciences (mathematics, physics or chemistry), social sciences textbooks can open and create a platform for students to discuss and critique the worldview of the textbook in comparison with the present day situation. History and social study textbooks serve the role of explaining where we come from and who we are, as well as conveying a universal understanding of history and the rules and norms of living with other people in society (Pingel, 2010). Intersectionality in this chapter is used as a method of inquiry and praxis that focuses on intersecting experiences of the oppressed (particularly skin colour, religion, gender, sexuality, age, class, height, etc.), setting a theoretical platform from which this study is set. From this platform, our understanding of racism as embodying all variables of oppression gives us the liberty to examine how educating about one variable (in this case the Holocaust) could highlight how other hidden variables also suffer from the matrices of domination. Davis (2008) defines intersectionality as the interaction between gender, race and other categories of difference in individual lives, social practices, institutional arrangements and cultural ideologies and the outcomes of these interactions in terms of power. Intersectionality brings the experiences of the people who belong to these oppressed and often marginalised categories together without undermining any singular category of oppression over another but rather understands them as a mutual constitutive matrix (Yuval-Davis, 2006). Under this framework, Holocaust education connects with antiracism education as well as human rights education. It is important that this connection is established as othering and racial discrimination violate people’s basic human rights to being different.

The Case Study The following sections report on a case study of a social studies class in an international school in Helsinki, Finland. This is a single case study focusing on how a textbook on the Holocaust was used to teach about

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antiracism. The data for the study consists of an interview with the teacher, focus groups with students and an empirical analysis of the textbook. We chose the international school for two reasons. First, ‘typical’ Finnish schools do not have a textbook on Holocaust education. Second, as none of us researchers are Finnish, our limitations in the Finnish language played a role in our choice of school for this study. This international school is a private school with a student body from approximately 40 different countries. English is the medium of instruction and the school follows the International Baccalaureate curriculum instead of the Finnish curriculum. The rationale for learning and teaching about the Holocaust is stated in the following excerpt, designed by the social studies teacher and adopted by the school: Why do we study the Holocaust? • As Desmond Tutu said “We learn about the Holocaust so that we can become more human, more gentle, more caring, more compassionate, valuing every single person as being of infinite worth, so precious that we know that such atrocities will never happen again and the world will be a more humane place”. • But since then other genocides have taken place especially in Africa: Rwanda and Darfur (Sudan). Students will be presented to (with) general facts of the Holocaust with the help of the book: The Holocaust, lessons of humanity. Then in small groups they will have decided which specific aspect to study and present to the class and when possible try to link the past to recent events. Always try connecting the past events to more recent events. If it is possible the class may have chance to have a guest speaker from the Jewish community to come and speak to them. • The study of more recent genocide will be studied … to make the students realize that human kind has not really learned from their mistakes. (Excerpt from the Social studies course outline for grade 8, 2013)

The Holocaust: A Lesson for Humanity used as the textbook in this class is a 72-page textbook published in South Africa in 2004, by The New African Books in connection with the Cape Town Holocaust Centre. The textbook is a social science (history) textbook suitable for students from Grade 9–11 in accordance with the South African National curriculum. Freedman (2014) points out that “the curriculum designers felt the inclusion of the Holocaust as a case study of human rights abuse was very important, given the curriculum was to be based on the Constitution and Bill of Rights” (p. 137–136), which in turn was directly influenced by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights post World War II. Freedman

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(2014) further argues that the availability of the textbook The Holocaust: A lesson for Humanity played a great role in the “decision-making process of the national curriculum designers” (p. 138) as it was considered a very reliable educational source for teaching and learning about human rights issues via the Holocaust. It should be noted that the social studies teacher selected the textbook for the social studies in grade 8 although the book or the Holocaust is not part of the International Baccalaureate curriculum. In an interview, the teacher highlighted that: The book for me was used as an icebreaking component for the kids to have a very quick understanding of what happened in the Holocaust by the pictures, the titles. The kids kind of get a quick understanding of the atrocities and whatever happened… (Interview with the Social Studies Teacher)

The textbook is designed in a way that it juxtaposes brief primary sources with activities and questions to engage the students into thinking and questioning the idea of racial discrimination and the promotion of human rights and social justice. The book begins with a brief guide for teachers and learners, aimed at helping learners to relate the issues from the book to present life. The primary data for this chapter stems from discussions in two focus groups with nine 8th graders in the social studies class. The age of students who participated in our focus group ranged from 12–14. One focus group lasted 23 minutes and the other 38 minutes. We consider these focus groups as a way of eliciting in-depth responses, opinions and language used in evaluating the textbook and the theme of racism. The recorded discussions were transcribed and analysed through a thematic approach to discourse (van Dijk, 2000, 2012). Discourse analysis is a specific genre of qualitative research methods that offers educators the opportunity for enhanced understanding of language-in-use. It is based on the belief that discourse has a central importance in creating and shaping social reality, and on a rejection of the view that language is a simple and objective way of reflecting or describing the world (Gill, 2000). Gee (2013) identifies different approaches to discourse analysis as examining the ‘content’ of the language being used, the themes or issues being discussed in conversation, or paying attention to the structure of the language, and how this structure functions to make meaning in specific contexts. Van Dijk (2001) takes this argument further by referring to critical discourse analysis as a discourse analytic research approach that studies how “social power abuse, dominance and inequality are enacted, reproduced and

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resisted by text and talk in social and political contexts… to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social inequality” (p.352). We use these two approaches in the analysis of our data as we focus on disarticulating the discourses in the context of power relations. Our primary data for this chapter comprise the two focus groups with the students. To preserve their anonymity they are referred to as S1, S2, etc. The two focus groups are distinguished in the analysis as FG1 and FG2 referring to focus group 1 and 2 respectively. During the focus group discussions, our questions were focused on the textbook. Each student had a copy of the textbook to use as a referral during the focus group. Furthermore, we used data from an interview with the social studies teacher since he is responsible for choosing the textbook and using the textbook as an educational tool (secondary data). The textbook is also used as essential secondary data.

Intersecting Racism and Holocaust Education Race/Racism is a category born out of the categorisation of humanity into artificially isolated groups based on their skin colour, class, gender, and other imaginable social identities (Leonardo, 2004). Such understanding of racism is not solely limited to biological racism, since discrimination based on religion is also considered as racism under the umbrella of new racism (Back & Solomos, 2000; Balibar & Wallerstein, 1991). The social studies teacher recognises the importance of intersectionality: …having taught the history of South Africa and the kids had a good understanding of the segregation and the police violence and all these apartheid and separation, we were able to link it slowly to the war of apartheid in Israel. So for that the kids had realise that in a way, their knowledge and understanding of apartheid and the white regime versus the black had helped them to have a better understanding on the Holocaust and I think the kids had a better output out of it. (Interview with the Social Studies teacher)

The two key words used by the teacher are “understanding” and “link.” The students’ understanding of skin colour discrimination works as a link in this case to understand the war in the Middle East (the Israel-Palestine conflict) and shows the interconnectedness of these issues. McCall (2005) argues for the usage of existing analytical categories that document relationships of inequality among social groups and changing configurations of inequality along multiple and conflicting dimensions.

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Noticing and using these relationships of inequality to highlight the everchanging matrix of discrimination is central in establishing a holistic framework for antiracism endeavours. Moreover, in their study of south-eastern England, Carrington and Short (1997) argue that students’ understanding of racism and their opinions on the value of Holocaust education are vital as students view the Holocaust as an essential medium in understanding a practical example of racial discrimination. In order to be able to assess racism in teaching and textbooks, it is imperative to know how the students in this study define racism. The students responded to the question What is racism to you? as follows: S1: Discrimination of other races. S2: Believing that they [others] are inferior to you. S3: Racism is basically discrimination of the race, skin colour or like discrimination based on religion. (FG 2)

The notion of “the other” as inferior can also be referred to as a “paradigm of enduring oppositions” (Mignolo, 2000, p. 947) where race is understood through binary oppositions of modernity—modern/colonial, white/black, superiority/inferiority, rationality/ritual, history/myth, Christianity/Islam/others, and heterosexuality/homosexuality/others. These binaries are very conceptual and problematic as the world cannot be adequately theorised through a binary lens. However, the idea of the other as inferior stems from the “colonial matrix of power,” which recycles the oppression of the colonised by the coloniser and must be challenged in antiracism works and works on Holocaust education (Mignolo, 2009, p. 161). Critics like Short (1999) and Back and Solomos (2000) argue that because racial discourse and practices are central themes in both Holocaust education and antiracism education, these two educational schemes can benefit from each other if educators make this link more visible. The students also saw the link between these two educational schemes as seen in the following discussion: S1: … this is also about racism like how, it’s (the Holocaust) still racism even if it is not called racism. Like look here it talks of anti-Semitism, the propaganda against the Jews. S2: They (Nazis) did this (discrimination) against people who were different. S1: They (Jews) were merely persecuted because of their faith.

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S3: It’s kind of a belief that they (Nazis) are better than other people because of their colour or whatever. (FG 2)

Racism in this case is understood in the actions of the binary of Nazis versus the Jews where the former uses its power to suppress the latter. Mignolo (2009) argues that in such binaries power always resides with the majority (Nazis) who aims at eliminating the opposing other at all cost, leaving them at the mercy of their (Nazi) pity. Arguing that “the Holocaust is racism even if it is not called racism” recognises the intersections of the matrix of domination that binds different variables of racial discrimination together under the auspices of new racism. As a result of this common ideological lineage and its recognition by the students, education about racial issues is central and could be an essential starting point for Holocaust education. This sets a historical ideological framework from which students can understand the issues of race and racism today, as well as work toward a world free from another case of inhumanity against the other, as in the case of the Holocaust. Another point of interest is the following discussion: S1: But this (textbook) is not only about racism. S2: Yes it’s about the Holocaust but I think it’s a good combination. It teaches you what racism is and it gives you an example of racism. It gives you the example of apartheid in South Africa. S3: Yeah it shows different parts of racism. S2: It shows different types of racism. (FG 1)

The different parts of racism here refer to the different variables used in the process of discrimination, such as gender, religion, class, sexuality, skin colour, etc. (Lentin & Gavan, 2011). It is important to note that Holocaust education can never be a replacement for antiracism education and vice versa. Students in this study understand that apartheid, Holocaust and other genocides are examples of the effect of gross racial discrimination, as well gross human rights violation (Pingel, 2014). In a nutshell, it is important to note that “one of the most consistent themes that runs through racist thinking and the values articulated by racist and fascist movements throughout this century has been anti-Semitism” (Back & Solomos, 2000, p. 191). Van Dijk (2005) cites the case of his previous studies of Dutch textbooks in which he discovered that racism is often only understood best in its extreme cases, such as the South African apartheid, segregation in the United States or the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. Students value the learning experience when being offered a chance

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to reflect on the Holocaust as a practical example of racism (Carrington & Short, 1997). As a result of this, in order to increase student action against racism, antiracist educators should use lessons learnt from the Holocaust and adopt measures aimed specifically at preventing bystander behaviour and conformity to group pressure (Short, 1999). “Students are not only expected to enhance their knowledge about the various facets of antiSemitism but should also learn to reject such prejudice attitudes” (Peucker, 2011, p. 66) in their daily life.

Stimulating Features of the Textbook— Teacher and Student Perspectives Textbooks, especially social science textbooks, transmit the ideologies and values of a society (Pingel, 2010), and because ideologies and values of a society are not always identical and homogenous, learners and educators can discuss and critique the past and present in anticipation of a better future worldview through a given textbook. In responding to why this textbook is selected for his class the teacher argued as follows: Because of the pictures, the topics are covered quickly in small units of one or two pages; they have very interesting questions. They (the textbook) also have a workbook that goes with it that gives you worksheets that you can give to each kid for each topic. That gives you extra reading and things like that. So if you had a classroom with no such high technology it will be an easy book to use… A compact textbook with good pictures and workbook that provides worksheet for students makes this textbook a relevant source of information for teachers. (Interview with the Social studies teacher)

The compact nature of the textbook helps to make it focused when treating specific themes. Moreover, the teacher argues that the accompanying workbook provides an extra teaching aid that helps facilitate the teaching and learning of the subject. On the other hand, the students (consumers of textbooks), who are often not consulted when designing a textbook, in this study argued in a similar vein to their teacher when responding to the question of what makes the textbook a good one: S1: It looks quite interesting. They have a lot of quotes. S2: It’s easy to understand the text and it’s clear and there is a lot of pictures. S3: Yes that shows you for example if I were reading the book they will just be telling me I will be like eehh whatever, but they show pictures of people. (FG 1)

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––––––––––– S4: They have all these poems like S5: Pictures of evidence S6: So that you don’t think they are making stuff up. S4: They have also different opinions. (FG 2)

The students seem to be interested in two main categories: content and aesthetics. In terms of content, when the students refer to the quotations in the book, they are engaging in the reliability of the text; quotations represent what has been said by a person, which represents a fact to them. The students also point out that the book is easy to understand and that it has numerous pictures. They find it easy to read because of the simplicity of the written text. The pictures also make the book interesting; however, they also represent evidence of “truth”—reliability (fact) that is an essential quality of a textbook to them. The students are also of the opinion that making use of diverse sources is vital for the reliability of the textbook: for example, a picture of a German officer conducting a “racial” test using a measuring instrument in 1938; pictures of signs separating “whites” from “non-whites” in Cape Town; a picture of “non-whites” sitting on the ground next to an empty bench reserved for “whites”; excerpts from common people like a German woman Grete, Golda Meir (1898–1978), former Prime minister of Israel; as well as the poem We and they by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), and much more. The diverse genres and sources of information make the book interesting for the students as the different pictorial and written sections influence various cognitive processes (Jones, 2009). Seeing the pictures and reading memories from survivors help in establishing the reliability of the text. The learners’ conception of the prestige, credibility, attractiveness and power of a person or source can influence how the message is received (Farley, 2005). Such credibility in this case is dependent on the audience’s interpretation of the material in relation to the concrete educational situation (Peucker, 2011) and the justified belief of the epistemic community (van Dijk, 2012). Gregory in Davies (2000, p. 59) argues that: An education about the Holocaust, above all things, simply must convey the misery and degradation that it brought in its wake. Holocaust survivors wrote so that we should understand the outrage to which they were subjected. We owe them no less than to ensure their voice is heard and the lessons learned. It is not the task of Holocaust educators to disguise from the young the depths to which humanity can sink.

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The stories of the survivors are told in this textbook through the pictures, poems and extracts used. Having these survivors and others from history represented in the textbook gives the readers a deeper understanding of the Holocaust.

Examples of What Students Focus on in the Textbook Textbooks provide important facts for teachers and students and as a result need constant evaluation to ensure that they are relevant to every changing demand of our world (Mahmood, 2011). The early pages (pages 4–5) of the textbook are “messages” intended to serve as a guide to both learners’ and teachers’ understanding of the textbook: “A Message to Teachers,” “A Message to Learners” and “Curriculum Information”. The core in the section for learners reads: The Holocaust is about people and their lives. When you look at the photographs in this book and examine the faces of the Nazis and their supporters you will see clearly that they were not monsters. They were ordinary people, most of them educated. How could they have participated in the violent slaughter of innocent men, women and children… we need to speak out against injustice, become more caring and compassionate, and help to create a society in which prejudice, racism, and injustice will not be tolerated, remember, it is the small actions in everyday life that can make a difference. You can choose to make that difference. (p. 4)

This message informs the learners that injustice like the Holocaust is human-oriented, born out of contextual ignorance, unchallenged prejudice and vain hatred. It challenges learners to help in creating a society free of such injustices like racism as they violate human rights and are not tolerated. However, the students argue that the message to learners was meant for the teachers and not for them. As a result, they all claimed not to have read that section. They justify this claim as follows: S1…it’s for teachers. Researcher: No it says here that message is for learners. S2: Yes but it’s a lot of text. S3: I think it’s because we overlook these and we just go straight to the facts. S1: It’s just kind of boring to get to go back and S4: You buy a book to know what’s in the book. S1: Good information S3: The facts

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S4: When you buy food do you buy the food to eat the food or study the bowl? (FG 2)

The students’ avoidance of reading the section clearly earmarked for them by claiming that it is boring makes us question whether or not it will affect their understanding of the context of the text. S1: I think it doesn’t have much on racism just the facts. S2: I think it has some information about racism but not enough. S3: Like it only has few pages. S1: It needs more. (FG 2)

The students’ appeal for more information stems from the fact that they fail to read the introductory sections of the textbook, which emphasised the theme of racism as the engulfing theme of the textbook. In the section entitled: A message to teachers the authors point out that: The Holocaust – lessons for humanity is about more than holocaust history. It is about the reading, writing and arithmetic of genocide. It is about such Rs as rethinking, reflecting and reasoning. It is about the responses to prejudice, racism, discrimination and scapegoating. It is about human rights and human dignity (p. 4).

It is therefore important that students and teachers read this section of the textbook. Teachers may explain the ideas in this section during their study of the textbook. It is essential that teachers help the students to better understand why it is important to read the section earmarked for students as it helps to prepare them to how to approach the vital issues in the textbook. “The potential that in-school learning offers needs to be used effectively, which calls for systematic curriculum reviews, sound didactic planning and capable teachers taking the role of facilitators, as well as additional external sources of particular expertise, prestige and credibility” (Peucker, 2011 p. 66), as a textbook is only a learning tool in this process, not an end. Furthermore, Paavola and Dervin (this volume) highlight that it is the duty of the writers, publishers and more importantly teacher educators to ensure that textbooks are explained and problematised. The students suggested the following further improvements to this textbook: S1: I think they should have more pages from each thing [topic]. S2: For me though there is not much information.

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Although it may be argued that issues related to the Holocaust are somewhat sensitive, this excerpt shows that the students are interested in immersing themselves in the content of the textbook. The students’ preference for more information means that information on a sensitive topic is vital for making the topic approachable and discussable by students. Less information creates fear and more information establishes an atmosphere where fear can be debugged and stereotypes put under scrutiny, as fear of the unknown is a recurring ‘excuse’ for racialisation (Van Dijk, 2005). The students argue that the fact that the book was published in South Africa plays an important role in ensuring the content of the book to be coherent context-wise. They point out that: S1: I think South Africa is much better because they can compare it with racism there. S2: Apartheid. S1: Apartheid. They can compare the things that happen in South Africa and the things that happen in the holocaust. (FG 2)

It remains debatable how much the place of publication affects the content of a textbook, as globalisation is continuously bringing the world closer and blurring borders. Books can be written in different parts of the world and published in other parts of the world. As a result, the role the place of publication plays on the reliability of textbook remains highly contested.

Conclusion Educating students as agents of change (Dei, 2000) in an everchanging world, cannot be dependent only on textbooks. Although textbooks play an essential role as a learning tool if used correctly, it should be noted that textbooks are socially constructed and have the power to support the formation of certain values and decline of others (Mikk, 2000). Their usage and relevance especially in social sciences cannot be limited to a specific field of study as certain themes in this field overlap. Understanding and making use of the boundless constructive potential of

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textbooks remains a continuous process beyond this chapter because “when students are given the opportunity to explore race-related material in a classroom where both their affective and intellectual responses are acknowledged and addressed, their understanding [of the concept and effects of racism and the need to combat it] is greatly enhanced” (Mahmood, 2011). There are important questions that teachers need to clarify for themselves before they start teaching about the Holocaust— questions like “Why am I teaching this subject in the first place?” (Totten & Feinberg, 2009, p. 2) and “What are the most important lessons we want our students to learn from the Holocaust?” (Ibid., p. 2). In answering these questions a teacher will find guidance in developing and implementing a manageable unit of study that is relevant and meaningful for their students (Totten & Feinberg, 2009). In a nutshell, Gross (2011, p. 73) summarises the central idea of this chapter—Holocaust education is an “integral part of global human rights and antiracist education”. Thus textbooks and educators’ understanding and emphasis of this idea through text and talk would go a long way in ensuring students’ comprehension of Holocaust education. In the absence of an exemplary textbook on racism, using an existing textbook on Holocaust education could be a starting point. However, with the current state of affairs with regard to the gap in Holocaust education and antiracism education in the Finnish curriculum or Finnish educational system, future educational initiatives on Holocaust education (e.g. a textbook) could be designed in a way that they visibly incorporate elements of antiracism education since this chapter has illustrated that both concepts have a common theoretical base. However, with the new core curriculum for upper secondary schools currently being developed we remain sceptical on whether this point of view is given any notice. We uncovered a great need for the voice of the students to be taken into consideration when designing textbooks. Student voices can enlighten textbook creators on issues or styles that could be student-friendly. A challenge for the future is to come up with better ways of making vital curriculum information sections in textbooks appealing to students. Having important information shared across the text as under the title Points to note may be one way of making vital details more noticeable to learners. Like any educational text, the textbook under study is not without its shortcomings. However, we argue that as an educational tool, it has the potential to explore both antiracism and Holocaust education.

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CHAPTER SEVEN ‘DO I CONTRADICT MYSELF? VERY WELL, I CONTRADICT MYSELF (…)’: REPRESENTING INTERCULTURAL ENCOUNTERS IN TWO FINNISH HISTORY TEXTBOOKS FRED DERVIN, KAISA HAHL, ANU HÄRKÖNEN AND HEIDI LAYNE

Abstract This chapter compares the ways intercultural encounters are introduced in two upper secondary textbooks published for teaching history in Finland. As in all textbooks, the authors are dependent on different factors in the texts they have produced: curricula, publishing companies, textbook editors, negotiations between team members, beliefs about what both students and teachers need, etc. The two textbooks deal with the topic of intercultural encounters by covering different geopolitical areas (in our focus: Africa and the world of Islam). We use a critical discourse analysis method to examine how the authors (and their editor) discourse around interculturality. The latter term, which is polysemic and controversial, can be approached from multifaceted angles. Being in research and practice on the ‘intercultural,’ scholars have noted variations in the ways interculturality is introduced between and within texts (in its general sense), leading to contradictory and unstable discourses on the hyphen between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Although both textbooks at times show a ‘renewed’ and critical understanding of interculturality, there are confused and confusing ideas about intercultural encounters. The foreign cultures are kept afar from the local students’ lives. Cultures are shown to be fixed

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and not changing and co-constructed through times and among people. The textbooks also fail to capitalize on opportunities to compare inequalities in different social structures and situations with for example the status of minorities in Finland.

Introduction “Intellectuals should be the ones to question patriotic nationalism, corporate thinking, and a sense of class, racial or gender privilege.” (Said, 1996, p. xiii)

It has become a truism to say that we live in an era of intercultural encounters. Too easily scholars, decision-makers and the general public make the claim, ignoring the fact that such encounters have also taken place on large scales before. Of course it would be naïve to compare the different historical periods. If intercultural encounters are not new, it is true that they appear to be many and varied, and fast, thanks to digital technologies and the hypermobility of certain categories of people, services, ideas and goods ‘across cultures.’ Yet this argument can appear to be very biased, depending on how one understands the notion of the ‘intercultural.’ Many scholars and practitioners admit today that the notion of the ‘intercultural’ is polysemic and empty at the same time, highly political, and that it can easily lead to the ideological mistreatment of the self and the other (Holliday, 2010). They are also critical of the simplistic equation of interculturality equals crossing national boundaries. This has been problematized by Glick-Schiller (2009), among others, as “methodological nationalism.” In the various fields of study that deal with the intercultural—applied linguistics, business, education, health care, etc.—a certain awareness of these problems has led ‘intercultural professionals’ to review their perspectives and approaches. Dervin and Tournebise (2013) note for instance that teachers of intercultural communication in Finnish higher education tend to oscillate between discourses about the intercultural as something ‘solid’ based on the encounters of national cultures and discourses of openness and fluidity that encompass more aspects such as gender and age and take into account the importance of contexts of interaction. In this chapter we examine how the idea of intercultural encounters is dealt with in Finnish general upper secondary education by analysing two history textbooks that are dedicated specifically to the theme. The article is structured as follows: Firstly we discuss the notion of the ‘intercultural’

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and present a ‘renewed’ way of examining it which is becoming increasingly recognized in research worldwide; a section reviewing research on intercultural aspects in textbooks follows; the two textbooks under scrutiny are then presented, as well as the publishing context; finally the analytical sections review the way(s) the textbooks construct the ‘other’—but at the same time what they say about us, the Finns. Our main interest lies in the first part of the title of this chapter—Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself (…)—which is borrowed from a poem by Walt Whitman (Song of myself, 1855): Do we find signs of coherent discourses around the idea of intercultural encounters in the textbooks? How do the authors (and their editor) talk about interculturality? How are different others treated in the textbooks? What about ‘self,’ i.e. Finnishness? And finally, do their approaches relate to current situations and discussions around the theme—bearing in mind that they have to respect the Finnish curriculum?

Theoretical Positioning: Interculturality in Textbooks What Interculturality? The title of this section might appear strange to some readers. Yet as hinted in the introduction this is a very valid question. Since the word intercultural appeared in both scholarship and practice in the 1950s— though the main accepted paradigm derived from American culturalist anthropology and business-oriented research has tended to be essentialising—critical approaches to the intercultural have multiplied, especially since the 1990s. In France, the main critical voice, Martine Abdallah-Pretceille (e.g. 1986), has advocated a shift from an overemphasis on national cultures to a more complex approach in education since the 1980s. Today researchers such as Shi-xu (China), Zhu Hua (UK), Adrian Holliday (UK), Prue Holmes (UK), Regis Machart (Malaysia), Ingrid Piller (Australia), Karen Risager (Denmark) and Fred Dervin (Finland)—to name just a few—follow a similar path by revising the way the intercultural is dealt with in both research and practice. Adrian Holliday’s (2010) work on intercultural communication and ideology has been extremely influential in pinpointing the damaging effects of overly culturalist and differentialist perspectives. Dervin (2013) argues that the intercultural is often victim of what the sociologist Heinich (2009, p. 39) calls ‘conceptual anthropomorphism,’ or the fact that concepts such as culture, community, group, countries, etc. are treated like human beings. In other words these concepts are made to act, behave and

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think, instead of the individuals who interact with each other in specific contexts. This has led to ignoring that ‘cultural identities’ are not enough to construct interaction and that other identity markers play at least as much importance as them (e.g. gender, profession, social class, capitals, etc.). This is why the aforementioned scholars propose to concentrate on processes and the co-construction of identities rather than on the ‘governance’ of culture. Peter Wood (2003) explains the caveat this way: “The gulf between the real diversity of the world and the artificial and often imaginary diversity of our social experiments is very large” (p. 29). He adds that the idea of diversity should not contribute to “imagin[ing] the world as divisible into neatly defined social groups, each with its own thriving cultural traditions” (Wood, 2003, p. 37). As such behind every individual lies many potential others (Pieterse, 2007, p. 139).

Research on Interculturality in Textbooks For Sleeter and Grant (2011), the textbook is “the major conveyor of the curriculum” (p. 186). At the same time Schlisser (1990) adds that textbooks transmit knowledge and “seek to anchor the political and social norms of a society” (p. 81). Discourses on otherness and interculturality in the European Union are very much influenced by political discourses created in Brussels and Strasbourg, the two decision centres for the 27 member states. Today’s EU keywords include: tolerance, respect of other cultures, anti-racism and anti-xenophobia and social justice (see the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme 2014–2020). As a member of the EU since 1995, Finland is very much influenced by this parlance. Discussions on how textbooks can contribute to these ‘noble’ objectives— but confusingly polysemic objectives (see our discussions above)—have been a priority in Europe and beyond. There is a long history of fighting against prejudice and stereotypes, two of the main goals of the ‘intercultural,’ in textbooks. In her UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision, Pingel (2009) details three events in this regard that took place after the First World War in 1918. For example, in the Nordic countries an association asked publishing companies to remove any sort of stereotypes about neighbouring countries (Ibid., p. 9). Textbooks are potential ‘breeding grounds’ for essentialism, especially in history textbooks that deal with intercultural encounters. In her article entitled Intercultural education and the representation of the other in history textbooks, Kirstín Lofsdóttir (2010) explains that “schoolbooks aim to transmit knowledge that is generally not contested but more or less accepted as ‘true’ or at the very least not harshly questioned, and thus play

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a powerful role in interpreting and giving meaning to the world” (p. 29). She adds: “Textbooks […] influence the creation of specific types of subjectivities and remain influential in categorizing individuals in particular ways” (Ibid., p. 23). Research on intercultural aspects of textbooks is plentiful. Most studies are from the fields of language education and applied linguistics—though most fields related to other school subjects have also produced research on textbooks as shall be noted infra. In language education, research on textbooks of major foreign languages has been produced in most countries. Two types of studies are to be found: research on representations of self–other and the use of textbooks for developing intercultural competence. Let us have a look at the first category. In English-language teaching, scholars from the socalled periphery, i.e. former colonies, as well as less influential countries in world politics and economy, have examined how Western textbooks position the other. Shin, Eslami, and Chen (2011) have analysed the presentation of local and international culture in internationally distributed textbooks. Their study shows that Western cultural content dominated. A similar conclusion is drawn in Tzu-Chia Chao’s (2011) article on comparable textbooks. The article concludes that cultural content allows the publishers to deliver a hidden curriculum of Western-centric ideas, products and characters. Mikander (this volume) shows that there are certain positive concepts and values, such as democracy, freedom and human rights, that in textbooks tend to be associated as being inherently Western, instead of ideals that would be attractive to all human beings irrespective of origin. The opposite seems to be the case about more negative concepts, such as colonialism. Mikander finds subtle articulations in textbook texts that suggest that ‘we’ are superior to ‘them.’ Some scholars have concentrated specifically on the representation of certain characters in textbooks produced around the world. Mehrunnisa (2013) studied the representation of Muslim characters living in Canada in social studies textbooks used in grades 1 to 10. He shows that Muslims are systematically placed in inferior and dependent positions compared to ‘white people’ and that reference to their identity always places them in ‘primitive’ positions in the Canadian context. Recently, Gray and Block (2014) have taken the important step of moving beyond the identity markers of race and ethnicity by working on the representations of the working class in UK-produced English teaching textbooks. Their diachronic study shows that the idea of class is dealt with superficially in the textbooks and that working class characters have nearly disappeared in today’s textbooks. In relation to how

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textbooks can contribute to developing intercultural competence, a few studies were identified. For example, Nguyen (2011) examines how textbooks can help to develop intercultural pragmatic competence while Arao and Kimura (2014) explore the idea of ‘mutual competence’ as developed through textbooks in relation to global education. Besides language education, many fields have looked into the links between the intercultural and textbooks. For example, Morgan, Plaisant, Lignier, and Moxham (2014) have researched how sexism is depicted and constructed in anatomy textbooks in higher education (France/Wales). The field of history has been quite productive in analysing intercultural aspects. As an example let us mention Ann Doyle’s 2002 article in which she concentrates on the concept of ethnocentrism in English history textbooks in relation to the Irish Famine of 1845–1849. Her diachronic study (1920s–1990s) shows that the textbooks all contain direct and indirect ethnocentrism.

Presentation of the Textbooks and Methodology of the Study Textbooks are not produced in a vacuum as they represent a multimillion dollar industry worldwide. McGarrity (2010, p. 107) suggests that in order to analyse textbooks, one needs to discuss the relational matrix between the author(s), industry and subject matter. Furthermore he states that usually textbook authors generate drafts which are proofread and modified to suit the market. McGarrity (2010) therefore explains that “[t]eachers and students thus come to a text that already bears the marks of many hands” (p. 108). In this chapter we examine two history textbooks produced in Finland for general upper secondary education (students of the ages 16 to 19; see also Introduction, this volume). The two textbooks are chosen because they are published by two of the major textbook publishing companies in Finland, Sanoma Pro and Otava. Sanoma Pro is the largest Finnish textbook publishing company that belongs to the Sanoma Group media concern. It also publishes e-textbooks and has a web-based learning environment to accompany the textbooks. The owner, Sanoma, is a media group with operations in more than ten European countries. The group has an annual turnover of 2.7 billion euros and employs over 15,000 people. It publishes magazines, newspapers and educational materials. The company owns TV and radio channels and bookstores and it is listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange. Otava publishing company was founded in 1890 and it is the second largest publisher in Finland. Like Sanoma, the Otava concern publishes books,

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owns shops and newspapers. The textbooks we have chosen for review are among three recently published (see Löfström, 2014), Linkki 6: Kulttuurien kohtaaminen (i.e. meeting of cultures; Jokiaho & PutusHilasvuori, 2011) published by Sanoma Pro in 2011 (henceforth referred to as Linkki) and Forum VI: Kulttuurien kohtaaminen (idem; Kohi, Palo, Päivärinta, & Vihervä, 2013) published by Otava in 2013 (henceforth Forum). Besides the conventions of the textbook market in Finland, the construction of textbooks depends on the instructions found in the Finnish national core curriculum (Finnish National Board of Education, henceforth FNBE, 2003; see also Introduction, this volume). History teaching in the Finnish upper secondary school consists of four compulsory courses (approximately thirty-eight 45-minute lessons) titled “Man, the environment and culture,” “European man,” “International relations” and “Turning-points in Finnish history.” There are also two specialisation courses named “Finland from prehistoric times to autonomy” and “Meeting of cultures” (FNBE, 2003, p. 181–186), the latter being the course whose textbooks are under review in this chapter. According to the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Upper Secondary Schools (FNBE, 2003), this course will “deal with the distinct characteristics and present times of one or more optional cultural spheres and intercultural interaction” (p. 185). The cultural spheres are “chosen from outside Europe” (p. 185) and cover different geopolitical areas (e.g. Africa, the Americas, Australia and Oceania, the Islamic world). One cannot but think here of A. Sen’s (2006) critique of the “partition[ing of] the people of the world into little boxes of disparate civilizations” (p. 4). According to the national core curriculum (FNBE, 2003), “[h]istory is a subject that creates an individual, national and European identity” (p. 180). Furthermore, history “[i]nstruction will place emphasis on the relationship between people and their environments along with the extensive scope of human culture, understanding of cultural diversity and the significance of international harmony” (p. 180). One of the objectives of history education is to “obtain material to create a world view that appreciates human rights and democracy and to act as responsible citizens” (p. 180). One of the specific objectives for students on the course of Meeting of cultures is to “be familiar with the basic concepts of culture and learn to understand the values and lifestyle of a culture different from their own” (FNBE, 2003, p. 186; for an in-depth historical and current look into the particular course, see Löfström, 2014). The content in the textbooks is particularly chosen to include such cultures that are more different from a mainstream European perspective—

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as is suggested in the national core curriculum. For example, in the chapters describing Australia or America, the focus is on the aboriginals in Australia or on the indigenous peoples in the Americas and not on the ‘cultures’ shared by the majorities (FNBE, 2003, p. 186). Forum divides the ‘foreign cultures’ (e.g. p. 13) under review into the following sections and titles (all titles and extract translations from both textbooks are by the authors of this chapter): Aboriginals—Australia’s aboriginal culture; Multi-faced Asia; Islam—religion and ideology; Unknown and faraway Africa; and Multicultural America. Linkki has structured its contents according to the following divisions: Africa—a continent of many cultures; The world of Islam; Indian culture; Eastern cultures—China and Japan; Multi-faced America; and The world of aboriginal peoples (in Australia, Oceania and the Arctic regions). The titles themselves give a first glance at the topics and how a particular area is portrayed. The chapters in both textbooks describe historical developments in a chronological order in the different cultural areas. As the title of the course stipulates, both textbooks promise to focus on the meeting of cultures. In our review of the textbooks, we will concentrate on the sections on Africa and the world of Islam, as well as the introductory chapters of the textbooks. These sections were selected because Africa and the world of Islam are two much discussed themes in Finnish society, as well as in many other countries of the world. The intercultural paradigm described in the beginning of this chapter serves as a template for analysing how the textbooks deal with intercultural encounters. We feel that many of the arguments found in the renewed way of problematizing interculturality have been used in (teacher) education for some time now under the guise of mainstream socioconstructivist and interactionist approaches in Finland. Thus, we find this approach fitting for our purposes. Finally, we use discourse analysis in our examination of the chosen chapters of the textbooks. We follow the principle proposed by Pennycook (1994): [Discourse analysis] is not concerned with how discourses (texts) reflect social reality; it does not look for relationships between discourse and society/politics, but rather theorizes discourses as always/already political; it does not seek out an ultimate cause or basis for power and inequality; but rather focuses on the multiplicity of sites through which power operates; it does not posit a reality outside of discourse but rather looks to the discursive production of truth. (p. 131)

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In other words, by identifying the use of for example certain words, phrases and metaphors in the textbook, we look for the ‘political’ and the expression and construction of ‘power relations’ in the way the textbook authors, assisted by their editor, created images of intercultural encounters. During our analysis we have extracted certain examples of the aforementioned from both textbooks. When possible, we compare how certain issues are treated in each book. Although we bring up problematic issues and discourses in both textbooks, our purpose is not to assess which book is better than the other.

Constructing Interculturality in the Textbooks The analysis of the data is divided into two interrelated parts: In this section we analyse the construction of the idea of interculturality in the introductory chapters of the two textbooks; the other section is based on a detailed analysis of two subchapters dedicated to Africa and Islam. Our interest in the concepts used and defined in the introductory chapters is related to the fact that we wish to see if they are reintroduced or simply used in dealing with Africa and Islam. In other words, are the general principles and definitions proposed in the introductory chapters made use of in the rest of the textbooks? We start with the introductory chapters. For Forum, we consider pages 6–29 (chapters: Introduction, Comics and stereotypes, Looking at foreign cultures) and for Linkki pages 7–25 (chapters: A world of many cultures, Cultures meet, The other in the European worldview). These chapters serve the purpose of introducing theoretical and methodological tools to the students.

Concepts Used in Relation to Interculturality In the national core curriculum, ‘culture’ is simply “understood as being a comprehensive concept” (FNBE, 2003, p. 185) and its definition is merely left to refer to the “different manifestations of culture in areas such as the arts, religion and social structure” (p. 186). The introductory chapter to the textbook Linkki also describes culture as being understood as a comprehensive concept that encompasses “all the different manifestations, beliefs and customs of the forms of life in a society that have been born in interaction with man and nature as well as that of cultures” (p. 7). Forum explains the concept of culture as mainly meaning different forms of art, such as theatre, music and literature but including in its wider definition

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“customs of living, religion, beliefs, values, norms and people’s worldview” (p. 14). Table 1 below compares the important keywords that are introduced in the chapters under scrutiny (they are indicated in bold or italics in the textbooks). Linkki proposes 26 keywords while Forum has 20. Linkki Culture Ethnicity Identity Worldview Mysticism Animism Linear time Cyclical time Individualism Collectivism Majority culture Minority culture Native culture Acculturation Deculturation Assimilation Integration Segregation Otherness Stereotype Racism Social Darwinism The White man’s burden Ethnocentrism Eurocentrism Multiculturalism

Forum Stereotype Culture Cultural identity Multicultural Majority culture Minority culture Acculturation Assimilation Culture shock Cultural conflict Segregation Rite of passage Linear time Cyclical time Non–verbal communication Ethnocentrism Ethnoromanticism Eurocentrism Us and others Orientalism

Table 1: List of keywords used in both textbooks in the order they appear. The words in bold and shaded appear in one textbook only. While Forum starts with the concept of stereotype based on an analysis of excerpts from Hergé’s Tintin, Linkki deals directly with three basic concepts that are found in most intercultural communication textbooks:

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culture, identity and ethnicity. It is difficult to see why Forum starts with the theme of stereotyping. If this is an important message for the rest of the textbook, it is not explicated. The authors of both textbooks define the keywords without suggesting that they are problematic. Both textbooks include similar but not identical terms and they appear in a different order. For example, whereas Linkki uses the term ‘identity,’ Forum has adopted ‘cultural identity.’ Forum defines cultural identity as the customs that are common and that unite people belonging to a certain culture. Linkki’s term identity is more individualistic and is defined as a person’s conception of self. Whereas Linkki emphasises that each individual can belong to many cultures simultaneously and one’s identity is not fixed but changes and adapts throughout life in different situations (see the theoretical section above), Forum talks about cultural identity and culture being something that belong to societies. Within the first pages Linkki discusses categorisations of cultures in terms of worldviews, attitudes and behaviours—without being critical towards these ideas. The authors introduce for example animism vs. mysticism, the linear vs. the cyclical and individualism vs. collectivism. Though the authors do not mention references to justify where they found these concepts or definitions, one can sense influences from intercultural communication scholars such as E.T. Hall or G. Hofstede. These figures and their analyses of intercultural have been highly criticized for being ideological, creating a hierarchy of values through for example the idea of collectivism (often applied to Asians) and individualism (“Westerners”), privileging the West (Holliday, 2010). Forum also introduces the dichotomy of the linear versus the cyclical towards the end of the chapters under scrutiny but it does not relate them to the following concepts of ethnocentrism and eurocentrism, i.e. explaining that the dichotomy can easily lead to these two phenomena. It is also important to note that both textbooks present a series of notions ending in -ion such as acculturation (both), assimilation (both), integration (both), segregation (both) and deculturation (Linkki). Again both textbooks propose unproblematized definitions which seem to present some ‘truth’ about what they refer to— thus ignoring current theoretical debates on these notions in world research. Finally the concept of racism is only present in Linkki.

Problems in Using Certain Concepts The first chapters of both textbooks serve as theoretical and methodological frameworks for the rest of the textbooks where different ‘cultural’ areas are reviewed. In what follows, bearing in mind the

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intercultural paradigm suggested above, we review some of the aforementioned concepts and arguments put forward by the authors. The concept of culture is omnipresent in the chapters and is often used as an agent, it does things social beings should be doing. The Swedish anthropologist Hannerz (1999) has called this way of using culture ‘culturespeak.’ Interestingly, in the introduction to Forum, the authors keep referring to cultures—not people. For example, they write: The knowledge of cultures and understanding of cultural encounters are emphasised in the curriculum for year 2005 [when the national core curriculum 2003 was the latest implemented]. Among the course objectives for “Meeting of cultures,” the curriculum mentions e.g. that student is familiar with the basic concepts of culture and learns to understand the values and way of life of a culture different from his/her own. (Forum, p. 6)

In the same introduction, the authors mention that the textbook examines “significant cultures from outside Europe.” The choice of the adjective significant appears problematic here: who has decided what ‘cultures’ are important outside Europe? Does it mean indirectly that the ‘cultures’ that are not introduced are less important or insignificant? What these discourses seem to be doing implicitly is to hierarchize ‘cultures’— and people at the same time. Choosing ‘significant cultures’ is a political act that the textbook authors do not even explain. On p. 14, the Forum authors have included a map of the world, which they have neatly divided into different cultures (with different colours). These include: Western culture, African culture, Muslim culture, Latin-American culture, Russian culture, Japanese culture, Chinese culture and Indian culture. This type of artificial division of the world will not help promote intercultural understanding (Wood, 2003). In fact, both textbooks talk about cultures as they have a life of their own without people necessarily being the ones who interact. However, it is indeed people who act and interact (Wikan, 2002). The desagentivisation of individuals is also obvious in the textbook sections dealing with stereotypes. When the authors explain the origins of stereotypes, they have a selective approach to who should be blamed. As such they mention cultural creations such as films, movies and the media. The stereotypes circulated by individuals—all of us—and, for example, by textbooks are not mentioned. Nor are social media which are breeding grounds for stereotypes. The consequence is a discourse of desagentivisation, where ‘we’ are free of guilt and manipulated by macro-discourses. Nevertheless, the authors of Forum (and Linkki) themselves often fall into the trap of stereotyping or at least bias. At the beginning of Forum,

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two pictures appear on different pages that depict ‘intercultural encounters.’ On p. 7 in the introduction to the book, a picture depicts a mixed wedding ceremony from the Fiji Islands. The brides are ‘local’ Fijians and the grooms ‘white’ men who are about to get married. The caption reads: “Fruitful cultural encounters.” On the other hand, on p. 15 a picture of Tibetan monks is followed by a comment on how the Chinese have attempted to include Tibet into the majority Chinese culture. Examples of other problematic concepts and arguments that are used by the textbook authors relate to the ideas of acculturation, assimilation and integration. The way the authors define and perceive these concepts is often biased and unbalanced. When the concept of acculturation is presented, a reference to the past turns the concept into neutral or positive ideas: thoughts, knowledge, skills and religions have spread. On the other hand, in Linkki, when deculturation (defined in the textbook as the loss or abandonment of culture) is defined the tone is quite negative and refers only to for example Europeans having brought diseases to South America. Finally, it appears clearly that the idea of assimilation is loathed by the authors when they write “Assimilation presumes getting rid of one’s own culture” (Linkki, p. 13). There is a clear and interesting case of bias and ethnocentrism (a concept the authors define themselves!) in Linkki when the authors give the example of the treatment of Muslims in France— through the example of the burqa (p. 12) and, indirectly, the concept of laïcité (i.e. separation of State and Church)—and talk about immigrants in Finland. The idea of laïcité is a complex one: The law forbidding anyone from wearing religious signs in schools and public places finds its origins in the political move of the early 20th century to separate the State from the Catholic Church. Forbidding religious signs was a way to push aside representatives from the Catholic Church. Today most people in France and abroad are not aware of the origin of this law (Dervin, 2013). Its use is different today and has tended to be targeted towards Muslims but also Catholics—with the idea that by not showing one’s religion, one will be treated the same way. The textbook authors give an impression that the idea of laïcité is related to the French model of assimilation. Thus what emerges from the description of the French case is too easy moralistic judgments about internal politics. Conversely, when the authors deal with the way integration is done in Finland, their discourses are overly positive: In Finland the objective of immigration and refugee policy has been to integrate immigrants and refugees into part of Finnish society. (Linkki, p. 14)

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This is accompanied by an extremely positive voice in the interview of a Finnish Kurd—a successful ‘new Finn’—who explains that integration is easy in Finland and that she has been treated nicely by Finns—a testimony that many immigrants and researchers could easily question. No interview of a ‘real’ person is used for the French case to illustrate the point made— the authors use a cartoon drawn by a Finn that shows a crucified woman wearing a burqa. The main problem about this example is that the students may get an impression that immigrant populations in Finland do not face challenges. Before moving on to the next analytical section, let us comment on the use of terms such as Westerners and Europeans in the sections under review. Though there are also a few negative examples from Finland in the pictures (references are made e.g. to a textbook illustration with black children published by the same publisher, Linkki, p. 16, in the past; a game referring to black people and Africans in both textbooks), the discourses used by the authors to problematize the negative impact of Europe and the West on the rest of the world refer to Westerners and Europeans—not Finns as such. For example in Forum the authors assert that “Europeans have looked down on others. The others have been uncivilised and pagans” (p. 25). Are Finns included in this assertion, bearing in mind that Finland gained its independence in 1917 and that the country has never been an actor in colonisation? If yes, are they among the Westerners and Europeans (the guilty) or the others (the victims)? It is interesting how the authors often want to give either one of these labels—and forget that it is possible to belong to both. For example in the case of Finland, what about new forms of neo-colonialism represented by cheap Asian labour used by some Finnish companies or deforestation in other parts of the world by the Finnish paper industry? Being scholars specialising in intercultural education, it is easy for us to criticize the textbook authors for ‘making the mistakes’ that have been commented upon above. The authors have obviously tried to explain the terms and concepts related to interculturality with some short, clear definitions and concrete examples. The idea must have been to keep the content of the textbooks manageable and easy for students to read and understand. Unfortunately this approach has required some questionable shortcuts.

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The Treatment of Different Others in the Textbooks The World of Islam As we have seen earlier, according to the Finnish national core curriculum, the course Meeting of cultures should deal with ‘one or more cultural spheres’ and their interaction (FNBE, 2003, p. 185). Both textbooks Forum and Linkki devote much of their chapter on the world of Islam for explaining the birth, growth and changes of and in Islam in terms of historical incidents such as conquering or losing areas. Both textbooks, Linkki in more space and detail, also describe the rules and customs associated with Islam. Both of the textbooks strive to talk about the world of Islam, and the religion itself, in positive terms. The rules of Islam are clearly detailed but Islam is also described as being adaptable and contextdependent. The Muslims are described as being caring and peaceful people. The Islamic culture (usually meaning arts and science) is praised rich and versatile. The West is mostly depicted as one culture and a united front which differs greatly from the Islamic world. Simultaneously, the authors criticize the Western world for seeing all the Islamic countries as similar. The textbook Forum seems more critical of the Western view of Islam and it pits the West against the Islam in several ways. In the following quote the West is portrayed negatively as a place where people do not take care of each other while in the Islamic world people do: Many Muslims find the Western individualistic way of life strange because in Islamic society people take care of each other. (Forum, p. 93)

The Western media is criticized for creating fictitious stereotypes of the Muslims by spreading images of, for example, violence, subordination of women and the lack of democracy: Today’s mental images of Islam are dominated by militancy, violence, the subordination of women, the lack of democracy and backwardness. The Muslims are expected to behave in a certain way. They can be considered terrorists, women’s oppressors and people who commit honour killings. The Western media create and uphold these images with simplifying and sensational reporting. […] The media rarely report on the peaceful life of the Islamic world. (Forum, p. 95)

The fundamental Muslim extremists are rightfully described as a minority and different from the Muslim majority. However, Forum downplays the ‘misunderstandings’ of Islam by explaining that many of the customs the Western world abhors actually belong to old tribal

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traditions and not the religion itself. The textbook attempts to take a neutral stand but fails to criticize or question the rightfulness of some of the phenomena that are presented as traditions ‘against’ women, such as honour killings and female circumcision (see Wikan, 2002). The textbook also misses an opportunity to link up these elements with the topics of inequality and violence against women in Finnish society in the past and today—and at the same time discuss the concept of ethnocentrism. Again, the authors’ discourse is unbalanced: sometimes they criticize all of the West (as one entity) of not being as caring as the West, but then show lack of criticality by not discussing and comparing crimes against women in the local context. The textbook Linkki, on the other hand, brings up more clearly the inequality of women and men in the Islamic world although it explains that modernisation has increased women’s involvement in work life. The textbook also describes the growing inequalities between the rich and the poor in many Islamic countries. The West is blamed for some of the changes that have happened along with the globalisation of the world of Islam: Along with economic growth, the spiritual values of Islam have clashed with the materialism in the Western consumer society when Western consumer goods have taken over shopping centres and the Western way of life has become familiar through satellite television. However, religion weighs heavily on Muslims’ consumer choices. Muslims like to purchase such products that have been manufactured and produced according to Islam’s ethical norms. (Linkki, p. 79)

Although Linkki previously lists the five main pillars of Islam, the “ethical norms” of Islam (that supposedly differ from the Western or Christian ethical norms) are not specifically explained. The text does not question what the “Western way of life” on satellite television is or if it is, for example, comparable to the way of life the students who read the textbook lead. Although in its introductory chapter Linkki explaines that individuals belong to different cultures simultaneously and that identities change through life, this fluidity is usually forgotten in the later chapters (Dervin & Tournebise, 2013). Although both textbooks mention in passing that there are small Muslim minorities in Europe (Forum, p. 84; Linkki, p. 87), they do not discuss Muslims living in the country that the textbook is made for, in Finland. This is despite the fact that today the number of Muslims in Finland is estimated to be close to the number of members in the second national church in Finland, the Orthodox Church (approximately 60,000,

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close to 1% of population; Martikainen & Sakaranaho, 2011). Again the Muslims are made the other who is different and faraway. The text or the questions in the textbook do not make them part of the Finnish students’ lives (see also Schatz & Niemi, this volume). One of the questions at the end of the chapter asks the students to consider what the Islamic culture could give to a Western person (Forum, p. 97). This assumes that there are no Western Muslims. Nevertheless, it is according to the national core curriculum (FNBE, 2003) that the “cultural areas […are] chosen from outside Europe” (p. 185). However, by keeping them distant and failing to bring them close to home increases the (imagined) gap between the different religions and cultures and will not help intercultural communication. The textbooks repeatedly reduce intercultural interaction to something that ricochets between social structures in different countries instead of action and interaction between human beings (Heinich, 2009): Although the Muslim extremists represent only a small minority of Muslims, intercultural dialogue has been difficult and fruitless since the WTC attacks. (Forum, p. 94)

One of the tasks at the end of the Islam chapters in both textbooks calls for students to consider in which type of situations or how the values of the Islam and the West could be in contradiction. But what are the values of the West? Do all the Westerners have the same values? Linkki includes a short section outside the main text that “gives voice to the representatives of the different cultures” in Finland. However, the one representative can obviously give an image that all, in this case Muslims in Finland, are similar in behaviour and ideas as she is. Nevertheless, the voice of the Muslim immigrant is a rare attempt the textbook does in showing an example of positive, modern day intercultural interaction.

“Unknown and Faraway Africa” This section title opens the textbook chapter to introduce the multifaceted sides of Africa to the reader of Forum, characterizing the continent as being something distant to ‘us’ Finnish people. However, it is possible to question whether Africa really is such an unknown and faraway place for those Finns who have visited the continent, and for those whose family members and friends originate from various African countries (in 2012 there were 25,895 people living in Finland whose continent of birth was Africa; Finnish Ministry of the Interior, 2012). It is likely that this

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type of discourse can actually strengthen the boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and at least maintain an ideology of national boundaries and citizenship, which forms the national Western type of ideology of what is local and what is global, and at the same time familiar or unknown (Mikander, this volume). In Linkki the title to the corresponding chapter is with less exotic character as it refers to Africa as “a continent of many cultures.” However, it does refer to ‘culturespeak’ introduced earlier in this chapter (Hannerz, 1999). Forum begins with a good intention by being critical toward the stereotypical image of Africa in Europe. In the introduction the reader is advised to pay attention to this while reading the chapter of Africa (Forum, p. 99). The first section narrates how Africans have previously been presented and pictured as distant, exotic and primitive through the examples of the African Star (a popular board game for children in Finland), a candy called ‘Suukko’ (‘Kiss’ in Finnish) which was previously called ‘Neekerin pusu’ (‘Negro’s kiss’; see further discussion on this in Itkonen & Paatela-Nieminen, this volume), and the Tarzan movie. In both textbooks ‘collectivism’ (a problematic concept introduced at the beginning of Linkki) is used to explain the ‘everyday life,’ as part of African ‘culture.’ In Forum the title for the paragraph dealing with collectivism is called “Collectivistic lifestyle” (p. 103), whereas in Linkki collectivism is mentioned as a part of lifestyle and food culture: “Collectivism as part of customs and eating culture.” Linkki clearly applies a culturalist approach (e.g. Holliday, 2010) where the knowledge is based on artefacts such as African hospitality, food culture, the culture for greetings, traditions and nature linked to the eating habits and food culture. Hospitality is an important part of African culture. Big feasts are organised for family and friends. Food is eaten in a traditional way using the right hand’s forefinger, middle finger and the thumb. The left hand is for wiping the mouth. Although oral tradition is significant in Africa, people do not talk while eating. (Linkki, p. 33)

The extract makes the African look exotic and primitive. It is a good example of the danger of the culturalist approach to education where certain habits and customs are presented as a static lifestyle, for example, for all the Africans. This is exactly what Forum warns the reader about in the beginning of its chapter: “Africa is often referred to as one unified area, forgetting that that it has dozens of different cultures and each of them has their own special characteristics” (p. 99). Forum describes collectivism in the meaning of families, tribes, marriages, and status of

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woman. The authors begin by describing how collectivism continues to have a major role in determining the lifestyle, belonging, as well as becoming. Surprisingly, however, the general way of writing is often by referring to Africa as one entity. This applies especially to the way the African ‘culture’ as a way of living is described in Forum: “The collectivistic lifestyle has dominated life in Africa and it is also prevalent today” (p. 103); or when referring to fertility in Linkki: “Ensuring fertility and the continuation of family, as well as knowledge about whose family new-born children belong to, are important for the families in the African culture” (p. 32). Linkki makes it sound like the latter is only particular to Africa. However, these are important factors in most countries and there are processes for recognizing fatherhood if parents for example are not married when the baby is born. According to the authors, the families, tribes and collectivistic groups in Africa are described as having more meaning than in Europe, since nation-states do not have a similar status in Africa as in Europe. This is interesting since with constitutions such as the EU the borders in Europe have also changed the meanings of belonging and becoming for individuals and families. Likewise, the sense of family, tribes and belonging is something intersubjective, taking place among people rather than part of some culture, country or continent. In spite of the clearer geographical borders and nationalities in the various African countries today, the ideology of a common African culture instead of African countries still remains throughout the chapters. The chapter on collectivistic lifestyle in Forum continues by describing how polygamy has been common in many areas, and how it has led to women’s low status and promoted men’s social status: In many areas in Africa it is still the role of woman to take care of family and to get food, water and wood to burn. These duties take most of women’s time. On the other hand women are respected because fertility is appreciated. (Forum, p. 103)

Patricia Hill Collins (2009) refers to this type of knowledge as strengthening the image of the black woman as a typical African “mammy”; opposing civilized Western culture with a “wilder” primitive image (p. 76). For example in Finland, there is a general belief that gender equality exists in household duties. However, as Anttila, Leskinen, PostiAhokas, and Janhonen-Abruquah (this volume) reveal, even in school textbook images women are significantly more often portrayed in domestic duties, whereas men are pictured in (semi-)professional settings.

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Both textbooks also explain the meaning of ‘tribes’ in African cultures and how the order of life and sense of belonging are constructed through tribes; even the names in a family and inside the tribe supposedly tell the whole story of an individual. At times the reader is forced to wonder whether the authors’ intention is to point out the exotic lifestyle in a positive light by explaining the “animistic” and “magical” worldviews with shamanism and voodoo (Linkki, p. 34). It is important to question whether this type of discourse instead serves to maintain the boundaries between ‘us modern Europeans’ and ‘them exotic Africans,’ and in a way also results in maintaining racial boundaries. Both textbooks have included a single voice of the other in the content about Africa. Forum quotes a Zambian reporter about the relationship between Zambia and the Western world. Linkki has an interview of a person from Ghana who grew up in Finland. In both of the textbooks the voices of the other point out the negative representation of Africa in the Western media. Interestingly, both books also present the challenges typical for the media to deal with, such as HIV, building democratic societies, applying human rights into everyday life, access to education and the need from the rest of the world to help Africa to fight these challenges. There is also an intersubjective side of the proposed information in the textbooks, for example in relation to women’s status, belonging and becoming part of a family, and this is missing in the way the textbooks are written. The style of presentation seems to be more based on historical knowledge without much questioning what is normal and abnormal. For example, Linkki (p. 38) states that Islam was better received by the Africans because Islam accepts the traditions typical for African tribes, such as polygamy and female circumcision. On the contrary, the spread of Christianity is explained to have had challenges because Europeans found the African lifestyle, structure of society and close contact to nature (such as nudity) odd, and therefore they were rejected among the locals (Linkki, p. 42). Thus, it is important to recognize how power is used in the way images are constructed and information is displayed.

Conclusion “The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it’s teaching.” (Rushdie, 2012, p. 31)

This chapter has examined the ways two history textbooks published in Finland deal with the topic of intercultural encounters. First the use of

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concepts was analysed and the chapters on Islam and Africa scrutinized. The results show that, even if there are signs of ‘renewed’ interculturality in both textbooks, the chapters tend to give contradictory and incoherent images of the other and self at the same time. In this sense, the authors and publishers seem to answer the question found in the title of this chapter, “Do I contradict myself?” (Whitman, 1855), with the assertion that “very well then I contradict myself”—without being aware of it. If one continues quoting Whitman, maybe one can find an explanation as to why the two textbooks seem to offer confused and confusing ideas about intercultural encounters: “(I am large, I contain multitudes).” Our worlds, the process of accelerated globalisation, digital technologies, etc. are symbolic of the ‘multitudes’ that we all face—which means that they are confusing. The textbook discussions about intercultural encounters are kept afar from the students’ lives. For one, the encounters are something that happen between cultures instead of individuals. The different others live somewhere far away and they are not made part of society where the students live. The Western people and Western culture are facelessly understood to mean everyone living in the West without differentiating between different countries, let alone individuals. However, even when the textbooks talk about the Europeans, they do not explicitly include the Finns as Europeans. Although Linkki includes in each chapter one example of a representative in Finland belonging to these “foreign cultures,” the examples are overly positive. The textbook authors (and their editor) miss a chance to compare the new immigrants’ situations to examples of minorities that have existed in Finland for a long time. For example, the Muslim youth may have some restrictions in participating in certain activities because of the guidelines in their faith. However, there are old Christian religion minorities in Finland whose members may have some restrictions as well. Africa is no longer only a distant place for the Finns since Finland has received thousands of refugees and immigrants from African countries. Furthermore, the textbooks do not sufficiently guide students in understanding that cultures are not boxes that surround us but each individual can belong to different cultural groups simultaneously (Pieterse, 2007; Wood, 2003). Besides ethnicity and religion there are many other dimensions that determine cultural groups, such as gender, age, profession, social class, etc. (Dervin, 2013; Holliday, 2010; Said, 1996). Finnishness nowadays can mean a Muslim person or a black person. However, these options are not brought up in the textbooks. Would it then be possible to create a textbook that translates the complexity of these phenomena and at the same time follows official instructions from the authorities? The framework given by the authorities

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for the course in question is very loose but a more unconventional textbook could be a commercial risk for the publishers (Löfström, 2014). The objectivisation of other cultures in the textbooks, which becomes crystallised, is problematic. ‘Doing’ history as such is also a challenging issue: History is always a viewpoint, which contains nolens volens biased discourses on self–other (Lofsdóttir, 2010). Our main concern here is how the students understand what is being taught in the textbooks and how it impacts their own worldviews. Surprisingly the textbooks contain too few activities leading to the development of critical competences towards discourses on the intercultural. Apart from one or two paragraphs at the beginning of the textbooks—which are not explicitly linked to the rest of the books—the texts seem to ‘passively’ present certain generalities and contestable knowledge about particular parts of the world which may lead to learning unwanted ideas such as neo-racism (see Rushdie’s quote at the beginning of this conclusion). An approach that creates space for group discussion and encourages an exchange of ideas could help students nurture independent and critical thinking, and learn to develop and defend their own ideas instead of being passively indoctrinated. Of course, here we have studied only the textbooks, not their teaching in the classroom. Teachers have opportunities for not using a textbook at all and bringing in material outside the textbooks, any of their choosing, based on their own interest and expertise within the framework of the curricula (Löfström, 2014). It would thus be of interest to see how these textbooks are used in practice to ensure that students are in fact taught “critical analysis and interpretation of information” (FNBE, 2003, p. 180). Our last concern is hence related to our interest in intercultural education. In accordance with Nils Andersson (2010), considering the fact that Finnish society is becoming increasingly diverse, the two textbooks are good illustrations of the ignorance of the presence of these diverse voices in secondary education. For Andersson (2010), this absence can easily lead to a risk of exclusion and a feeling of inferiority as the textbooks tend to show an image of ‘their’ cultures as lagging behind.

References Abdallah-Pretceille, M. (1986). Vers une pédagogie interculturelle. Paris: Economica. Andersson, N. (2010). Intercultural education and the representation of the other in history textbooks. In T. Helgason & S. Lässig (Eds.), Opening

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the Mind or Drawing Boundaries? History Texts in Nordic Schools (pp. 33–60). Göttingen, Germany: V&R unipress GmbH. Arao, H., & Kimura, M. (2014). A study of topics in English textbooks for mutual understanding. Linguistics, Culture & Education, Vol 2014 (2014), Article ID 1. Retrieved from http://scik.org/index.php/lce/article/view/1084/582 Collins, P. H. (2009). Another Kind of Public Education: Race, the Media, Schools, and Democratic Possibilities. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Dervin, F. (2013). Impostures interculturelles. Paris: L’Harmattan. Dervin, F., & Tournebise, C. (2013). Turbulence in intercultural communication education (ICE): does it affect higher education? Intercultural Education, 24(6), 532–543. Doyle, A. (2002). Ethnocentrism and history textbooks: Representation of the Irish Famine 1845–49 in history textbooks in English secondary schools. Intercultural Education, 13(3), 315–330. Finnish Ministry of the Interior. (2012). Maahanmuuton vuosikatsaus 2012 [Annual report of immigration 2012]. Retrieved from http://www.intermin.fi/download/43667_Maahanmuuton_tilastokatsau s2012_web.pdf Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE). (2003). National Core Curriculum for Upper Secondary Schools 2003: National Core Curriculum for General Upper Secondary Education Intended for Young People. Retrieved from http://www.oph.fi/download/47678_ core_curricula_upper_secondary_education.pdf Glick-Schiller, N. (2009). A global perspective on migration and development. Social Analysis, 53(3), 14–37. Gray, J., & Block, D. (2014). All middle class now? Evolving representations of the working class in the neoliberal era: the case of ELT textbook. In N. Harwood (Ed.), English Language Teaching Textbooks: Content, Consumption, Production (pp. 45–71). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Hannerz, U. (1999). Reflections on varieties of culturespeak. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2, 393–407. Heinich, N. (2009). Le Bêtisier du sociologue. Paris, France: Klincksieck. Holliday, A. (2010). Intercultural communication and ideology. London, UK: Sage. Jokiaho, M., & Putus-Hilasvuori, T. (2011). Linkki 6: Kulttuurien kohtaaminen. Helsinki: WSOYpro Oy. Kohi, A., Palo, H., Päivärinta, K., & Vihervä V. (2011). Forum VI: Kulttuurien kohtaaminen. Keuruu: Otava.

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Lofsdóttir, K. (2010). Deconstructing the Eurocentric perspective: Studying ‘Us’ and the ‘Other’ in history books. In T. Helgason & S. Lässig (Eds.), Opening the Mind or Drawing Boundaries?: History Texts in Nordic Schools (pp. 21–32). Göttingen, Germany: V&R Unipress GmbH. Löfström, J. (2014). Lost encounters: A post-colonial view on the history course “Meeting of cultures”, in the upper secondary school in Finland. Yearbook International Society for History Didactics, 35, 147–164. Martikainen, T., & Sakaranaho, T. (Eds.). (2011). Mitä muslimit tarkoittavat? Keskustelua islamilaisista virtauksista Suomessa ja Euroopassa. Turku: Savukeidas. McGarrity, M. (2010). Communication textbooks. From the publisher to the desk. In D. L. Fassett & J. T. Varren (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Communication and Instruction (pp. 107–128). New York, NY: Sage. Mehrunnisa, A. A. (2013). Representation of Muslim characters living in the West in Ontario’s language textbooks. Intercultural Education, 24(5), 417–429. Morgan, S., Plaisant, O., Lignier, B., & Moxham, B. J. (2014). Sexism and anatomy, as discerned in textbooks and as perceived by medical students at Cardiff University and University of Paris Descartes. Journal of Anatomy, 224(3), 352–365. Nguyen, M. T. T. (2011). Learning to communicate in a globalized world: To what extent do school textbooks facilitate the development of intercultural pragmatic competence? RELC Journal 42(1), 17–30. Pennycook, A. (1994). Incommensurable discourses. Applied Linguistics 15(2), 115–138. Pieterse, N. P. (2007). Ethnicities and Global Multiculture: Pants for an Octopus. London, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Pingel, F. (2009). UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision. Paris, France: UNESCO. Rushie, S. (2012). Joseph Anton. New York, NY: Random House Trade. Said, E. (1996). Representations of the Intellectual. London, UK: Vintage Books. Schlisser, H. (1990). Limitations and priorities for international social studies textbook research. International Journal of Social Education, 4, 81–89. Sen. A. (2006). Identity and violence. New Delhi, India: Penguin. Shin, J., Eslami, Z. H., & Chen, W. C. (2011). Presentation of local and international culture in current international English-language teaching textbooks. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 3, 253–268.

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Sleeter, Ch. E., & Grant, C. A. (2011). Race, class, gender, and disability in current textbooks. In E. F. Provenzo Jr., A. N. Shaver & M. Bello (Eds.), The Textbook as Discourse (pp. 183–214). New York, NY: Routledge. Tzu-Chia, C. (2011). The hidden curriculum of cultural content in internationally published ELT textbooks: A closer look at New American Inside Out. The Journal of Asia TEFL, 8(2), 189–210. Wikan, U. (2002). Generous betrayal: Politics of culture in the new Europe. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Wood, P. (2003). Diversity: The Invention of a Concept. New York, NY: Encounter Books.



COMMENTARY JULIE S. BYRD CLARK1

We have to consider diversity as the norm. Past scholarship in linguistics has treated homogeneity as the norm, and diversity as a special condition that requires additional explanation. (Suresh Canagarajah) You never know how the experiment will turn out. It can be great, it can be really bad, but failure is so important, because it involves a learning process and it enables you to get to a new level and to other ways of seeing your work. (Marina Abramovic)

This exciting volume breaks new ground in both research and practice, particularly for the field of teacher education as it demonstrates the significance for students, student teachers, teachers/educators, and researchers to develop critical approaches and practices when analyzing and researching discourses on diversities in textbooks. Uniquely set in the Finnish context, this volume draws upon multidisciplinary perspectives and methods, and while spanning different school levels and content areas, the authors cohesively and successfully argue for the study of textbooks to be a compulsory component of teacher education programs. They further advocate for approaches and practices in the study of textbooks to reflect current social realities and contemporary understandings of diversities. Attempting to find ways of incorporating cultural and linguistic diversity and examining relations between, amongst and by the self and other have been at the forefront of many teacher education programs and scholarship. However, the critical analysis of diversities2 in textbooks as well as the sociopolitical and economic aspects involved in textbook production as regards diverse diversities (Dervin, 2014) remain relatively unexplored in the fields of teacher education as well as language and

 1

Associate Professor, Western University, Ontario (Canada). As Dervin (2014) has poignantly argued, the use of diversities reflects current societal realities and political changes, rather than the perpetuated use of the term diversity, which has tended to reflect a static categorization applied only to immigrants. 2

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intercultural education, despite the prominence and continued use of textbooks around the world. With globalization, increased mobility, immigration, and rapid change, it is imperative for all of us, but particularly for those who will become future teachers in today’s world, to continuously develop practices and approaches that enhance our sensitivity, criticality, and self-reflexivity when encountering diversities and similarities in our everyday lives. For these reasons alone, this book makes a highly original and much welcomed contribution. Taking into account contemporary approaches in developing reflexivity and criticality (Byrd Clark & Dervin, 2014; Dervin & Risager, 2014), I find this volume offers several important themes when proposing the study of diversities in textbooks: 1. The development of critical thinking regarding representations and the inclusion of research on diversities in textbooks for teachers and the training of future teachers. 2. The engagement with and use of diversities rather than diversity. 3. The role for on-going dialoguing with publishing companies, practitioners and researchers—continued discussions amongst all three groups. While all three are important and inter-related, I will focus more of my attention to the first two themes, and relate them to current and related trends in the field(s).

Critical Thinking and the Significance of Representation(s) in Textbooks One of the biggest themes running through this volume is the importance of being able to interpret, navigate, negotiate, and understand in a multitude of ways different kinds of self–other, ‘self other’ representations as well as the constructions of ‘us and them,’ particularly those found in textbooks (including the textbooks themselves)—in other words, the development of some kind of critical awareness. First and foremost, we all use representations while communicating with one another to interpret, to describe, and to replicate an idea or memory of what we mean or wish to convey. Through representations, we come to understand the world and organize our constructions of reality and of one another. As Jovchelovitch (2007) recounts, “there is no sense of reality for our human world without the work of representation” (p. 11). In this case, it is through the study of textbooks that students can come to gain certain

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understandings of the world. As the authors in this volume show, it is therefore essential to develop independent, critical thinking when it comes to textbooks; that is providing opportunities for students to engage with texts and images in textbooks as different kinds of representations, giving them a chance to talk about their own interpretations rather than accepting such representations as dogmatic, indoctrinated truths. As Byrd Clark and Dervin (2014) argue, it is necessary to include discussions on “how and why we come to represent our impressions and ideas in the ways that we do, as well as how and why these representations become meaningful (symbolic) to us and in many ways become positioned as ‘common sense’” (p. 12). With textbooks, this notion of ‘common sense’ or an allknowing, omnificent voice may appear visible—although without critical engagement, teachers and students will passively come to accept such ‘common sense’ representations without ever considering the contradictions, nor the socio-political and economic aspects surrounding such representations. As the editors of this volume compellingly argue, without systematically including how and why it is important to analyze textbooks, namely in the training of teachers to be, student teachers will most likely see the textbooks as ‘common sense,’ neutral, and authoritative vestiges, rather than biased, situated, ideological representations. They may simply regard the textbooks themselves as standard teaching materials rather than an invitation for critical exploration. Most disturbingly, they may very well pass their uncritical views of diversities onto their future students without ever realizing the repercussions of their actions in reproducing powerful hierarchies and/or social exclusion (e.g. stereotyping, bias, and processes of othering). The authors of this book go beyond the analyses to investigate whether diversities are present or absent in the texts. Their arguments go beyond the use of textbooks in developing intercultural empathy/competence. They distinctly, yet unanimously, put forth a call for deeper engagement with diversities in textbooks; that is to critically reflect upon and discuss who gets represented in the texts, in what ways, as well as how and why, and the implications of such representations. More importantly, they do not reserve researching diversities in textbooks exclusively for teachers and student teachers rather they also underscore the significance of including researchers’, editors’, and publishers’ discourses and on-going negotiations in the representation of diversities in textbooks.

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Diversity Encounters Diversities One of these ‘common sense’ representations taken up in this book is the notion of diversity. While a ‘hot topic’ spanning over 30 years, diversity has historically been treated as a special condition that requires additional explanation (Canagarajah, 2014), and as a homogeneous entity that has mainly been applied to linguistic and cultural aspects associated with immigration. Teacher education has primarily adopted a prescriptive, socio-psychological static view of diversity as having to do with multiculturalism, linguistic minority rights, and issues of equity. On the other hand, diversity in schools, more recently, has also been positioned by teachers and policy makers as a problem to be managed, dealt with, and overcome. For example, in many discursive samples from my research in Canada, future teachers initially described diversity as treating everyone’s language and culture as equal, and yet at the same time (in online discussions), they stated that they would correct and make sure that their future students would know the ‘proper way to speak’ and the ‘real’ culture (in this case, French, see Byrd Clark, Mady, &Vanthuyne, 2014). Diversity in this vein represents a superficial static monolithic category, infused with behaviourist theories of everyone being equal (tabula rasa) although representative of only one separate (sedentary) membership (be it ethnic, cultural, linguistic, national, religious, etc.). Additionally, diversity as described by the student teachers in this manner is clearly contradictory and shaped by rationalist theories (e.g. Chomsky, 1965) and hegemonic official Nation-state discourses that reflect ideologies of standardization, community, and legitimacy. Nevertheless, we know that “recognizing diversity can become problematic because an individual may selfrepresent and belong to several cultural and linguistic communities (Quell, 2000) and more importantly, not all groups are perfectly homogeneous (Marcellesi, 1979; Rampton, 2005)” (Byrd Clark, 2012). Perhaps more frightening is that the majority of student teachers who participated in the above-mentioned study did not think there was anything wrong with such discourses. In other words, they were attached to the notion of speaking a language a certain way, and that there existed a ‘real’ singular or homogeneous culture without realizing how such representations of diversity deny heterogeneity and devalue all other linguistic varieties and ways of being, doing, and thinking. Going back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, the fields of applied linguistics and intercultural education began experiencing shifts, particularly as regards the construction of difference through the representations of language, identity, and culture. As iterated in several of

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the chapters in this book, traditional monolithic notions of language, culture, and identity have become blurred and obscured. Researchers in the post-modern era have begun to notice the pluralities, complexities, instabilities, and exceptions in people’s linguistic practices and ways of self-representing. Studies such as Le Page and Tabouret-Keller’s (1985) paved the way for contemporary research on identity/ies, and inspired such work as “crossing” by Ben Rampton (1995), social identity complexity by Roccas and Brewer (2002) and the notion of multiple identities as well as the “negotiation of multiple identities” (Blackledge & Pavlenko, 2001). People are not simply users or producers of utterances, rather they have complex social identities (e.g. social class, gender, sexuality, race, religion, citizenship, ethnicity, etc.). However, most of the research on multiple identities in teacher education continues to focus on linguistic and cultural (ethnic) issues, rather than on some of the more ‘hidden’ identities or diverse diversities covered in this volume. The choice of the word diversities as opposed to diversity seems much more representative of contemporary social realities. Diversities appear to get at the pluralities of identities, the overlapping of them, whereas multiple identities could still very well represent multiple, yet separate identities (talking about the identities as separate unrelated strands just as one enumerates languages and discusses their L1, L2, L3, etc., as separate systems). Exploring how diversities are represented in textbooks and if they are included in textbooks, is vital for advancing research as well as pedagogical practice. Being able to critically discuss diversities in textbooks could allow more spaces to challenge strong ideological positions and increase one’s selfreflexivity in order to become open to variation and imagine different possibilities.

Discussion and Future Directions As with anything, textbooks are representations; representations of certain viewpoints situated within specific time-space dimensions. They are complex, contradictory, and fragmented or incomplete (impossible at capturing everything). However, representations can be powerful (e.g. media, xenophobia, anti-immigrant discourses, racism), and if not taken seriously, they can become dangerous and allow ignorance to pervade. They can also stop people from connecting with one another and cause misunderstandings, misconceptions, and mistrust. As the authors have argued throughout this volume, we need to talk about how diversities are represented (or not represented) in textbooks. We cannot accept or subscribe to such traditional homogeneous representations (e.g.

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stereotyping; generalizing a group of people) at ‘face value,’ nor can we afford to ignore or not include representations of diversities (e.g. treatment of people of different genders, social class experiences, races, ages, religions, etc.) in our textbooks and teaching materials. This is why teachers and those who are in the process of becoming teachers need to be trained on how to be critical of their teaching contents and materials in relation to diversities. What is most alarming is that many teachers do not have the training or tools to analyze discourses or detect processes of othering taking place in schools, or in textbooks. Getting at some of the complexities of diversities and “becoming ‘other’ to oneself require a critical reflection on historical and social relationships of power and authority” (Kramsch, 2014, p. 244). This requires more than being able to talk about the geography of Africa or the history of Islam. As the authors demonstrate repeatedly, critical analysis of textbooks (e.g. critical discourse analysis) is ultimately a valuable practice and approach, but something for which teacher trainers themselves must be trained. We must continue to look beneath the surface of texts and illustrations! More importantly, we need to understand how groups or individuals are represented in textbooks and that most of the time such representations are influenced by power and selected because of dominant discourses in society (of what is valued/valuable or deemed ideologically appropriate and what is not). This selection of representations also works the same for groups and individuals who are absent or do not appear in textbooks. Also, we cannot forget the marketization of textbooks, nor the neoliberal discourses espousing decisions on what is financially viable and sellable— in other words, what gets printed or not. As the editors of this volume propose, there must be on-going discussion between publishers, editorial teams and researchers, so that results, even if deemed ‘controversial’ get discussed and possibly delivered without overt censorship. As the editors of this timely volume mentioned in their introduction, I believe that with continued advancement of technological innovation, there will be an even stronger need to research diversities in digital texts among others. I also share their opinion that diversities will become even more visible with some of the different uses and users (younger generations) of new technologies. There will be new kinds of jobs and intercultural encounters online that demand different kinds of skills and knowledge. As such, I would refer to these new kinds of skills as more flexible, fluid practices—practices that permit people to draw on a wealth of resources (criticality, sensitivity, empathy, reflexivity) and understand as well as be able to flexibly use multiple ways of communicating in order to value particularities, but also connect/resonate through similarities. E-

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textbooks are making their way across the globe now, and we will certainly see an impact on international markets as well as on the use of textbooks in the future. That said, the profession of teaching will continue to undergo change and so will the publishing industry. It will be interesting to see not only how textbooks are used, but also how teachers, who have received training in critical discourse analysis, respond and approach ‘hidden’ agendas and ideologies surrounding diversities in texts. Will they choose to use ‘traditional’ textbooks or not? And more importantly, will their students understand and be able to practice critical analysis and interpretation? This is a big challenge for the future of education on diversities, but one that is highly worthwhile and indispensable. To conclude, no textbook can cover everything, nor can one textbook be perfect or neutral in its representations of diversities. However, this original and engaging volume, spanning from ABC books, home economics books, history books, to a discussion of a textbook on the Holocaust, reveals the importance for students, student teachers, teachers and researchers of being able to critically analyze the representations of diversities (or the lack thereof) in textbooks, even and especially those that are contradictory and incoherent. In a time of instabilities, exceptions, and on-going evolutions in teacher education programs, the need for systematic analyses of what place diversities occupy in texts, as well as how diversities get represented in textbooks, becomes a must. This volume makes an important contribution and advances knowledge, particularly for all those involved in teacher education, multicultural education, and curriculum and policy planning in today’s globalized world. As far as I am aware, this is the first book-length volume that explores the analysis of diversities in textbooks from multiple perspectives, methods, disciplines, school levels and contents in Finland. It will serve as a valuable resource and at the same time, will lead the way for new and exciting directions in the field.

References Blackledge, A. & Pavlenko, A. (2001). Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. International Journal of Bilingualism, 5(3), 243– 258. Byrd Clark, J. (2012). Heterogeneity and a sociolinguistics of multilingualism: Reconfiguring French language pedagogy. Language and Linguistics Compass Blackwell Online Journal. 6(3),143–161. (Invited/Commissioned submission).

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Byrd Clark, J. & Dervin, F. (2014). Introduction chapter in J. Byrd Clark & F. Dervin (Eds.), Reflexivity and multimodality in Language Education: Rethinking multilingualism and interculturality in accelerating, complex and transnational spaces (pp.1–42). London, UK: Routledge. Byrd Clark, J., Mady, C., & Vanthuyne, A. (2014). Exploring reflexivity, multiple identities, and multilingualism in three postsecondary French language teacher education programs. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17(1), 129–155. Canagarajah, S. (2014). Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. London, UK: Routlege. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Dervin, F. (2014). Exploring new ‘interculturality’ online. Language and Intercultural Communication, 14(2): 1–16. Dervin, F. & Risager, K. (2014). Researching identity and interculturality. London, UK: Routledge. Jovchelovitch, S. (2007). Knowledge in context: Representation, community and culture. London, UK: Routledge. Le Page, R. B. & Tabouret-Keller, A. (1985). Acts of identity. Creoleapproaches to language and ethnicity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press Kramsch, C. (2014). Commentary in J. Byrd Clark & F. Dervin, (Eds.), Reflexivity in language and intercultural education: Rethinking multilingualism and interculturality. London, UK: Routledge. Rampton, B. (1995). Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London, UK: Longman. Roccas, S. & Brewer M. B. (2002). Social identity complexity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6, 88–106.



CONTRIBUTORS

Aminkeng A. Alemanji (MEd) is a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki (Finland). He works on the issues of racism in education (formal, informal and non-formal education). He uses qualitative research methods in his research enquiry into themes such as new racism, antiracism pedagogies, double consciousness, boarder thinking, whiteness versus blackness, and the colonial matrix of power. His research is grounded on critical discourses and its relation to day-to-day experiences of human interaction. Sonja Anttila (BA, Home Economics Sciences). Her recent Bachelor’s thesis focused on the performance of gender in Home Economics textbooks. The data for the chapter titled ‘Performing Gender and Agency in Home Economics Textbook Images’ is drawn from her Bachelor’s Thesis. Fred Dervin is Professor of Multicultural Education at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Dervin also holds several professorships in Canada, Luxembourg and Malaysia. In May 2014 he was appointed Distinguished Professor at Baoji University of Arts and Sciences (China). Prof. Dervin specializes in intercultural education, the sociology of multiculturalism and student and academic mobility. Dervin has widely published in international journals on identity, the ‘intercultural’ and mobility/migration. He is the Director of the Education for Diversities (E4D) research group. http://blogs.helsinki.fi/dervin/ Kaisa Hahl (MA in English philology, English teacher) is a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki (Finland). She researches and teaches in a new English-medium Subject Teacher Education Programme (STEP) in the Department of Teacher Education. Her research interests include aspects pertaining to the development of the multicultural teacher education programme, such as issues related to interculturality and the use of English as a lingua franca. Anu Härkönen (MA) is Acting Head of International Relations at Turku University of Applied Sciences (Finland). She has worked in the field of

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international education for over 15 years and has a wide experience of coordinating and developing international activities in higher professional education in Finland. She is currently carrying out her PhD research at the University of Helsinki. Tuija Itkonen (MFA and Med) is a doctoral student at the University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education (Finland). Her multidisciplinary research focuses on critical pedagogies and teachers’ intercultural competences. She is currently working on intertextuality and intercultural art education. In 2012–2014 she lectured and produced educational material for teachers/leaders to promote acceptance of diversity, equality and non-discrimination at schools and businesses as part of the Equality is Priority project (Finland’s Ministry of the Interior and the EU Program for Employment and Social Solidarity). Currently she serves as a primary teacher at the European School of Helsinki. Hille Janhonen-Abruquah (PhD, Home Economics Sciences) is University Lecturer at University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education (Finland). Her current research interest and teaching focuses on topics like Family migration, Home Economics Science Education and Consumer Education. She is coordinating a Culturally Responsive Education mobility project among Finnish and African university partners and taking part in a research project called Learning spaces for inclusion and social justice: Success stories from immigrant students and school communities in four Nordic countries. She has also written text books for Home Economics in basic education. Rita Johnson Longfor (PhD) is Researcher at the University of Helsinki. Her special interests are research on English Second Language (ESL) pedagogy and issues of language diversity. Heidi Layne (MEd) is a doctoral student in the Education for Tomorrow Nordic Research project: Learning Spaces for Social Justice at the University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education (Finland). Her research interests include critical pedagogy and postcolonial perspective of intercultural education in teacher education and internationalisation of higher education, immigration and social justice. Jouni Leskinen (MA, Linguistics and Education; Master’s degree student, Home Economics Science) has previously worked as a teacher of English

Diversities and Interculturality in Textbooks: Finland as an Example

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and German in Basic Education. He is currently working as a teacher of Home Economics and languages at a comprehensive school in Helsinki. Pia Mikander (MSocSc) is a doctoral student at the Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki (Finland). Her research focuses on the construction of a superior West in textbooks currently in use in geography, history and social science in Finnish basic education. Pia-Maria Niemi (MTh) is a doctoral student in the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Her research interests include pedagogical practices that promote intercultural learning and sense of community at lower secondary level in basic education. She is also a qualified subject teacher of religion and psychology. Edda Óskarsdóttir (MEd) is currently pursuing her doctorate at the University of Iceland. She has 19 years of experience as a special education teacher and coordinator at a compulsory school in Iceland. Her field of research is inclusion and in particular how special needs education can be inclusive practice. Edda was an Erasmus exchange student at the University of Helsinki for the fall of 2013 where she worked with Prof. Fred Dervin’s E4D research group. Martina Paatela-Nieminen gained her Doctorate of Arts (2001) from Aalto University (formerly University of Art and Design, Helsinki, UIAH) where she has worked as a Lecturer and Senior Research Associate in the School of Art Education (1985–2006, 2008–2009). She served as a Research Fellow at the Academy of Finland in 2004–2006. Currently she is an Adjunct Professor of visual culture at the Aalto University, University Lecturer and an Adjunct Professor in Art Education in the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. She also served as a Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Eastern Finland for a two-year project 2009–2011. Her interests include intercultural art education, and she continues to represent Europe at InSEA (International Society for Education through Art) World Council (2011–2014 & 2014– 2017). Heini Paavola (PhD) is a University Lecturer in didactics and multicultural education in the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Her research focuses on diversities in teacher education, schools and kindergartens. She has 20 years of

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Contributors

experience of teaching in mainstream, special education and Finnish as a second language classrooms. Hanna Posti-Ahokas (PhD, Education) has conducted research on gender and education in Sub-Saharan Africa. She is teaching courses on gender and multiculturalism in the University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education (Finland). Her current research focuses on internationalisation of teacher education, North-South mobility and innovative approaches to study of diversities in teacher education. Monika Schatz received her Bachelor’s degree in Comparative Studies of Cultures and Religions from the Phillips-University Marburg, Germany (2009) and her Master’s degree in Intercultural Encounters from the University of Helsinki, Finland (2012). Currently she is pursuing her doctoral degree in the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on internationalization and export of Finnish higher education. Find the contributors’ complete academic profiles through the Research Data Base: https://tuhat.halvi.helsinki.fi/portal/en/persons-current/search.html