Decolonising English Education: Analysing the Representation of Colonial Relationships in Norwegian School English Textbooks. The Colonial Legacies: Exploring Their Continued Impact on the English Language Subject in Norwegian Schools

Abstract

This thesis aims to research how and if the colonial history and its aftereffects are reflected in English subject textbooks. The research is a qualitative case study of the Explore 7 My Book textbook. With the goal of making teachers and others working in education, more aware of their teaching material, considering the multicultural classroom of today, and the work needed for every pupil to feel included and represented. Results from the research found that the textbook did work with several serious topics, such as racism, death, Indigenous people, slavery, and colonialism, but that there were no explanation of the words meaning, and thereby a lack of depth. There is little to no actual perspectives in the textbook, as the texts while about different people from around the world, with different cultures, religions, and skin colours, none of them are written by the people themselves. The textbook focuses mostly on reflection tasks, and can begin discussions of both racism and colonialism, but the teacher must actively work for these discussions to lead to deeper reflections about what these concepts entail. The research concludes that the role of a teacher weighs heavily in the process of decolonising education, and suggests that teachers use the textbook, with the supplement of other texts and tasks that can add to or further the textbook content.