From a Welcoming Rhetoric to a Narrowing One: Constructing Citizen Agency in Finnish Social Studies Textbooks

Abstract

The article examines the ways in which the reader is positioned in the role of an active citizen in social studies textbooks in Finnish basic education. The Finnish core curriculum in general and the syllabus for social studies in particular both emphasize active citizenship as a central educational goal. Drawing on the frameworks of discourse analysis and textual interaction, the article analyses the linguistic and rhetorical means by which the reader is addressed and discusses the image of societal agency that is constructed. The results show that the introductory chapters employ an encouraging, “welcoming rhetoric” to depict an ideal reader who is about to grasp the potential to change the world. Theme-specific chapters indicate that this agency consists of some domain-specific actions in society, such as voting, while the reader is left with a reactive role regarding choosing a career and participating in the economy and offered quite limited ways to influence climate change and the ongoing ecological disaster.