IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v13y2024i7p344-d1424173.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Constructing Agency in the Climate Crisis: Rhetoric of Addressing the Crisis in Social Studies Textbooks

Author

Listed:
  • Henri Satokangas

    (Institute for the Languages of Finland, 00530 Helsinki, Finland)

  • Pia Mikander

    (Department of Education, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland)

Abstract

The climate crisis is an urgent issue that requires immediate and significant international action and is tightly connected to several other global problems such as biodiversity loss, economic inequality, and countercurrents to democracy. Therefore, enabling the construction of an agentive role in relation to the crisis is a crucial task for education. According to the national core curriculum, Finnish social studies teaching should aim for active democratic citizenship. The article analyses the linguistic construction of agency in relation to climate issues in social studies textbooks from a discursive perspective, examining the rhetoric of positioning and addressing the reader as an active agent. The article draws an overall image of agency regarding the climate in textbooks and examines its implications. Four categories of orienting to the crisis and constructing agency in relation to it are identified: (1) constructing agency against the crisis; (2) stating the unsustainable nature of the current system; (3) enlisting ways of making an impact in general; and (4) representing the absence of crisis. Based on the findings, this article suggests that textbooks do not fully utilise their status as a forum for imaging our capacity to act to stop the climate crisis and, therefore, fall short of the goals set in the curriculum.

Suggested Citation

  • Henri Satokangas & Pia Mikander, 2024. "Constructing Agency in the Climate Crisis: Rhetoric of Addressing the Crisis in Social Studies Textbooks," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-20, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:13:y:2024:i:7:p:344-:d:1424173
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/13/7/344/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/13/7/344/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:13:y:2024:i:7:p:344-:d:1424173. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.