THE DIFFERENT ETHNIC-RACIAL, FAMILY, DISABILITY, AND RELIGIOUS REPRESENTATIONS IN TEXTBOOKS

Abstract

The textbook is one of the main teaching materials. It often defines the curriculum and determines what to teach and how. Unveiling its contents is important, because it forms notions, conceptions, knowledge, and skills. This qualitative and documental study had as content analysis the textbooks adopted for Elementary School, based not only on the explicit content, but also on the analysis of the hidden curriculum and the invisibility of discourses. The general objective was to understand how family, religious, inclusive, and ethno-racial diversities are portrayed in elementary school textbooks, and as specific objectives - to identify the ways in which diversities are portrayed, to map good experiences in textbooks and teaching materials that deal with family, religious, and ethno-racial diversity, and to analyze the discourses found in textbooks about the themes. The results of the collection were organized in four tables and divided by categories: 1. family diversity; 2. ethno-racial diversity; 3. disabilities and; 4. religious diversity indicating the collection, the subject, the year and a brief analysis.  It was concluded that the books present advances and overcome the barriers inserted in the Eurocentric and traditional education to bring new concepts and demystify the vision of an education based on the interests of the dominant and conservative class. However, at the same time that the books present advances in representation, they leave aside important discussions about the themes defined in the categories