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What Is a Native American, an Aborigine and a Maori?

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What Is a Native American, an Aborigine and a Maori? Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education What is a Native American, an Aborigine and a Maori? A comparative analysis of three English subject textbooks for Norwegian upper- secondary schools — Sara Christine Eira ENG-3981 Master's Thesis in English Literature and Education May 2018 Acknowledgements My Sami background has inspired me to write this paper, as I have experienced that the Sami people often are represented in an erroneous and dated manner in textbooks and in general. Therefore, my interest was to investigate whether this representational manner applies to indigenous people in English-speaking countries as well. This master's thesis is a result of a long-term process, which has been exciting, educational and challenging. Exciting because it gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in a topic that I find important. Educational because I have gained insight and knowledge about a topic that I am passionate about. Challenging because it required a great deal of time and effort, especially in the writing process. In this regard, I would like to thank all of you who have supported, encouraged and advised me. My greatest gratitude goes to my supervisor, Ruben Moi, for his commitment to helping me from start to finish in this process. From the very beginning, Ruben has inspired me to elucidate the topic in new and creative ways and guided me through this process always in a positive and enthusiastic manner. Your support has been greatly appreciated. Sara Christine Eira Tromsø, May 2018 Abstract The purpose of this paper is to analyse the visual and textual representation of indigenous cultures in three English subject textbooks for Norwegian upper-secondary schools. The current study focuses on theories of dynamic cultural understanding, descriptive cultural understanding and structural binarism. The aim is to examine how English subject textbooks affect the development of upper-secondary pupils’ understanding of indigenous populations represented in the textbooks through images and texts by and about indigenous cultures. The main method in the study is textbook analysis, which requires a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches, where the qualitative approach is applied to give an extra dimension to the qualitative approach. The main methodological approach in the study is the hermeneutical analysis, also known as the descriptive analytical method, which is a qualitative approach allowing for an in-depth study of the content of texts and images in the textbooks. The quantitative content analysis was applied to examine the range of texts and images resigned to indigenous cultures in the different textbooks. The qualitative content analysis was applied to formulate analytical points directed at the texts and images of the different textbooks. The results from the study revealed that all three textbooks have a tendency to compare indigenous cultures to the majority of the population or other ethnic groups in the different countries. Additionally, the textbooks tend to focus on the negative side of the history and the traditional and conventional characteristics of the indigenous cultures. The results also revealed that the textbooks tend to focus to a large extent on oppositions and distinctiveness of indigenous cultures. Thus, the visual and textual representation of indigenous people in the three English subject textbooks for Norwegian upper-secondary schools do not promote to a sufficient degree the desired cultural understanding and intercultural competence and therefore contradict with the cultural aims in the English subject curriculum, national curriculum and other official documents. Keywords: indigenous, visual, textual, representation, dynamic, descriptive, oppositions Table of Contents 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 The indigenous cultures in focus ................................................................................. 4 1.2 Cultural representations of indigenous populations .................................................... 6 2 Theoretical framework ....................................................................................................... 9 2.1 The textbook and earlier research ................................................................................ 9 2.2 The concept of indigeneity ........................................................................................ 12 2.3 The concept of culture ............................................................................................... 13 2.3.1 Cultural representations of indigenous groups ................................................... 15 2.4 Culture in English teaching ....................................................................................... 18 2.4.1 Indigeneity and culture in the Norwegian National Curriculum for Knowledge Promotion and other official documents .......................................................................... 20 2.5 Summary .................................................................................................................... 22 3 Material and Methodology ............................................................................................... 24 3.1 Material ...................................................................................................................... 24 3.1.1 Corpora ............................................................................................................... 25 3.2 Methodology .............................................................................................................. 27 3.2.1 Qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches ................................... 28 3.3 Methodological approach .......................................................................................... 29 3.1 Validity and reliability ............................................................................................... 30 3.2 Summary .................................................................................................................... 31 4 Presentations of findings .................................................................................................. 33 4.1 Mind the Gap ............................................................................................................. 33 4.2 Targets ....................................................................................................................... 34 4.3 Tracks SF ................................................................................................................... 34 4.4 The quantitative content analysis .............................................................................. 34 4.5 The descriptive analytical method ............................................................................. 38 4.5.1 The textual representation of indigenous cultures .............................................. 38 4.5.2 The visual representation of indigenous people ................................................. 47 4.6 Summary .................................................................................................................... 50 5 Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 51 5.1 The division between the different indigenous groups .............................................. 52 5.2 Dynamic versus descriptive understanding ............................................................... 53 5.3 Representation of indigenous cultures in the textbooks ............................................ 57 6 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 60 6.1 Main findings ............................................................................................................. 60 6.2 Suggestions ................................................................................................................ 62 6.3 Limitations and recommendations for further research ............................................. 63 Works cited .............................................................................................................................. 65 List of Tables Table 1 - Total images and indigenous images corpus ............................................................ 35 Table 2 - Total pages and Indigenous pages corpus ................................................................. 36 Table 3 - Individual culture count of the indigenous image corpus ......................................... 37 Table 4 - Individual culture count of the indigenous page corpus ........................................... 37 1 Introduction The aim of the following study is to examine how English textbooks affect the development of upper-secondary pupils’ understanding of indigenous populations represented in Norwegian upper-secondary textbooks through images and texts by and about indigenous cultures. Waagene and Gjerustand (2015) demonstrate that the textbook is the most widely used learning tool in the Norwegian school system, which is why I have chosen to focus on this particular learning tool in the current thesis. By investigating relevant theories, English subject textbooks for upper-secondary schools, English subject curriculum, the Norwegian Knowledge Promotional Reform
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