An analysis of the representation of citizenship education in contemporary grade six South African social sciences textbooks.

Abstract

This thesis comprises a case study of four grade six South African Social Sciences textbooks, published in the post-apartheid era. The study focuses on how they represent citizenship education. It examines citizenship education as a highly important concept, used in many nations with different aims. An important resource in education, textbooks have been used as a channel through which learners are educated regarding citizenship. This dissertation answered a main research question on how citizenship education has been represented in the selected textbooks. Based on an interpretivist paradigm and approached from a qualitative perspective, I generated data from four contemporary Social Sciences textbooks, compliant with the Curriculum Assessment and Policy Statement (CAPS), that are utilised at the grade six level. Semiotic analysis was used as a method of Discourse Analysis (DA) to analyse the data. The findings revealed that citizenship education is taken very seriously in the textbooks, which cover virtually all aspects of the political, social and economic rights and responsibilities of citizens as a means of creating an identity for South African citizens.