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

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.

1. Introduction

The ongoing climate crisis requires immediate and fundamental changes to the global economic system (IPCC 2023). Still, in Finnish public discussion, visions of systemic changes and climate-related collective action are often framed as radical violations of common sense. In this article, we examine educational materials, representing official consensus knowledge, as actors that play an institutional role in the politics of common sense. We explore the pedagogy of active citizenship in social studies in relation to the climate crisis. Textbooks pedagogically represent a position for pupils and, therefore, reflect and contribute to conceptions of societal agency in relation to the climate crisis. We approach these data through the following research questions:

• How is the climate crisis framed for the reader?
• What kind of action is represented as possible for the reader regarding the climate crisis?

Working within the broad framework of critical discourse studies (e.g., Wodak and Meyer 2016), this article addresses agency—the “socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn 2010)—by utilising the methodological approach of textual interaction (Hoey 2001; Thompson 2012). The study of textual interaction focuses on how a reader’s position, with their abilities, possibilities, alternatives, and restrictions on action, is constructed by linguistic choices. An analysis of discursively constructed reader and writer positions (or readers-in-the-text and writers-in-the-text; Thompson and Thetela 1995) and their interplay makes visible the position in which social studies pupils are placed when they are socialised into active citizenship and, on the other hand, the position from which they are addressed by the authorial voice of textbooks representing the education system (for this task of textbooks, see Apple 1993; Schissler and Soysal 2005).

The analysis is informed by the notion of the absent curriculum (Wilkinson 2014). Wilkinson (2014) shows how the absence of certain perspectives and content excludes some identities and positions them as outsiders and non-relevant in the frame of the official knowledge. In our analysis, the notion of the absent curriculum is empirically operationalised by examining the enabling and constraining of perspectives on the climate crisis as they are constructed in textual interaction: resources for enacting the roles of textbook writers and readers as linguistic choices in the text, such as address, questions, and modality, as well as describing a world without explicitly addressing the reader (Thompson and Thetela 1995; Thompson 2012; see also Martin and White 2005).

Based on our previous studies on agency in social studies textbooks (Satokangas and Mikander 2023; Mikander and Satokangas 2023), we expected that agency in relation to climate crisis would be approached predominantly from an individual perspective, possibly emphasising individual consumption choices. As will be shown, this expectation was met to a great degree, yet the picture of agency construction turned out to be a versatile one.

2. Official Knowledge and the Politics of the Text(book)

As text artifacts deeply entrenched in the institutional practices of education, textbooks play a specialised role in the information environment of the 2020s. Textbooks “select, curate and organize the vast universe of possible knowledge and thus participate in the organized knowledge system of society” (Apple 1993, p. 49). In the fragmented information environment, where algorithms provide individuals with differentiated flows of news and information about the world, it has become even more difficult for educators to even estimate the input of information that young people receive. In this environment, textbooks have a particular function as curated and pedagogically designed presentations of official knowledge. They have always had this function, but it is highlighted even more in the exploded information economy of the 21st century.

The role of the textbook is in constant flux as the society around it changes. The variety of materials used in teaching spans YouTube videos, news articles, and many other materials that are more readily available to both teachers and pupils than ever before. These also provide various voices to be employed in teaching critical media literacy. Simultaneously, an increasing amount of professionally produced and edited teaching materials made deliberately for pedagogical purposes is available in digital form. Why, then, study textbooks in the 2020s?

In Finland, textbooks have, in the past few years, been re-politicised in public debate, as has school teaching more generally (Rantala and Puustinen 2023). This calls for continuing textbook research within the frame of citizenship and societal agency. The study of textbook discourse produces knowledge on the role of the textbook in today’s information economy. In this information environment, textbook studies can pose important questions for pedagogical representations of official knowledge and the visible and hidden curricula. If textbooks are able to present pedagogically curated and structured knowledge in a fragmented information environment, what does it mean that textbooks have to “cater for all”? As representations of official knowledge, what kinds of imagination of action do they enable and what kinds of action do they constrain explicitly or through silent exclusion?

Textbooks are expected to promote active citizenship, but the topic of the climate crisis makes it relevant to ask where the border between active citizenship and activism lies. In the Finnish society of the 2020s, the relationship between youth activism and the textbook is intriguingly tense. The job of the textbook is to present official consensus knowledge that supports the socialisation of the pupil as a decent citizen (see Børhaug 2014). On the other hand, the curriculum encourages active citizenship, with its different ways of influencing society. Activism often confronts exactly the prevailing power (e.g., the government) that the school system represents. Many adolescents in Finland view the ongoing ecological disaster as a major threat to their future. Simultaneously, a significant section denies the existence of the whole phenomenon (Veijonaho et al. 2023).

In 2023, a squatting movement spread around Finland when school buildings, from high schools to universities, were occupied in demonstrations against the newly formed right-wing government, and often the staff of the occupied institutions supported the occupation (e.g., Eskelinen and Ryynänen 2023). This led to heated debates over the responsibilities of educational institutions: must they be loyal to the government, or can they encourage the pupils to speak their minds using techniques of disobedience? Finnish public discussion has witnessed similarly heated discussions over the means of influence used by climate and environmental activists, such as Extinction Rebellion. When activist movements, among which many young people are active, are dissatisfied with the actions of “official Finland” and the government, a question worth asking is how the textbook fulfills its duty of representing official knowledge, as well as supporting the formation of active citizenship.

3. Active Citizenship in the Finnish Curriculum for Social Studies

Sustainability is highlighted in the core values of the Finnish curriculum (FNAE 2014). However, this is not necessarily reflected in the content of instruction. Zilliacus and Wolff (2021) express concern over the gap between the curricular aim of sustainability and opportunities for teachers to carry out the needed transformative work in practice. They also point to a lack of focus on urgent global dilemmas in school policy documents. There is also a concern that Finnish teacher education policy does not sufficiently support teacher candidates in educating for sustainability (Wolff et al. 2022).

Within social studies education, pupils learn about society and how social change takes place. The Finnish core curriculum for social studies (FNAE 2014) never mentions the climate crisis explicitly. It does, however, include calls for pupils to become active, responsible, and entrepreneurial citizens (p. 260), as well as calling for pupils to follow “current issues and events, and to understand the connections between these and pupils’ own lives (p. 260)”. We have focused on social studies because educating active citizenship is particularly predominant in its syllabus and, moreover, the core of the subject.

Central topics that are listed as the content of social studies instruction for grades 4–6 include the local environment and working life, the rights and duties of different groups in society, human rights, minorities, democratic competences, and the economy. In year 9, social studies education is supposed to include global issues. The content section specifies that the pupil is to study different ways of promoting one’s own wellbeing and security in the family and the local environment. As for the economy, grade 9 instruction includes pupils deepening their understanding of basic economic concepts and phenomena and central economic actors, as well as examining economic factors from the perspective of sustainable consumption.

Most research into Finnish social studies textbooks has been conducted on books aimed at grade 9 because the textbooks for grades 4–6 (elementary school) have only existed since the 2014 national core curriculum (FNAE 2014) was issued. Grade 9 textbooks for social studies have been studied from the perspective of active citizenship. Virta (2000) found that textbooks of that time presented society in a way that did not encourage critical enquiry. In her later research, she included textbooks with concrete examples of civic engagement that exceeded traditional representative democracy (Virta 2000, 2006). In our previous studies, we have examined how the ideas of active citizenship, influencing, and democracy and threats towards it are discursively constructed and exemplified in social studies textbooks (Satokangas and Mikander 2023; Mikander and Satokangas 2023, 2024). We have found that the textbook reader is presented with agency predominantly through consumption, voting, and communication, as well as that threats to democracy are portrayed selectively, downplaying the significance of anti-democratic movements.

4. Theoretical Framework

Discourse analysis works as a broad theoretical and methodological orientation for our textbook analysis. The perspective of textual interaction functions as a way to investigate the concrete textual practices of agency construction. The concept of the absent curriculum is put at work in the structuring of themes where the climate crisis is or is not visible. Combining these points of departure, the two analytical perspectives follow the two research questions posed in Section 1:

(1) representation, ways of portraying knowledge: what is constructed as totalities and as themes, what is absent, etc. (e.g., Fairclough 1995; Macgilchrist 2018).

(2) textual interaction: how the reader is addressed, persuaded, led through chains of arguments, etc. (Thompson and Thetela 1995; Hoey 2001).

4.1. Discourse Analysis on Textbooks

Critical discourse analysis has been utilised extensively in textbook research, unraveling representations of the world and of knowledge (e.g., Macgilchrist 2018). Textbook discourse, and more specifically, the rhetoric of agency construction through linguistic choices, can be seen as a technology for enabling and constraining thinking and action. A crisis comes into being through discourse, when events are constructed into crises through texts and other circulating ways of talking about events and connecting them to each other (Patrona and Thornborrow 2017).

Given the global urgency of the topic of climate change, it is no surprise that textbook discourse on the topic has also attracted research attention. From a linguistically oriented perspective, discursive representations of climate change have been studied in a variety of subjects: for instance, US science textbooks (Román and Busch 2016), South African and Norwegian geography textbooks (Trædal et al. 2022), and US history textbooks (D’Apice and Bromley 2023). In this vein of research, the representation, portrayal, and framing of climate change and the means of taking a stance towards it are set in focus. Zahoor and Janjua (2020), exploring ideas of ecological justice in English-language textbooks, focus on the representation of the interdependency of human activities (such as the economy) and the environment. They give an example of textbook analysis where the relationship between humans and the planet is studied linguistically by examining (1) the representation of nature and (2) ways of acting upon it. Our research questions follow a similar line of inquiry where how the phenomenon is presented and what actions can be taken are two complementary sides of the approach.

4.2. Textual Interaction in the Textbook

Textual interaction can be seen as a grassroots view of the actual semiotic resources used in constructing agency within the educational frame. This framework (Hoey 2001; Thompson and Thetela 1995) approaches written communication as an interplay of writer and reader positions constructed through language. Text is a forum where this interaction takes place through linguistic choices, such as personal references, questions, intertextuality, explanations, evaluative expressions, and modality. The approach is based on a dialogic view of language (see Linell 2009; Thompson 2012), and a discursive analysis in this framework has been identified and labelled as dialogically oriented linguistic discourse analysis (see Makkonen-Craig 2014). Personal references and choices made in representing the social and economic world can be viewed as embodiments of the curricular goals. Within this framework, enabling and constraining can be seen as dialogical dimensions of the text and analysed by examining textual features.

4.3. Absent Curriculum, Partial Totalities, and the Process of Mentioning

Education is based on constantly choosing what to teach and what not to teach. When analysing the absence of themes or phenomena in teaching materials, the notion of an absent curriculum (Wilkinson 2014; see also Kohvakka 2023) is a useful tool. Following Wilkinson, absence can be approached on different levels. The null curriculum refers to absence from the national core curriculum. The unselected curriculum consists of things visible in the curriculum but not chosen to be presented in textbooks. In examining the absent curriculum in textbook discourse, the lens of critical discourse analysis is useful because it has traditionally paid special attention to absence: in CDA, it is essential to map the choices made in texts and the underlying sociocultural frames with the help of concepts such as implicature and presupposition (Fairclough 1995, pp. 5, 6).

Environmental issues are visible in the common part of the national core curriculum, where the core values and transversal (cross-curricular) competences are enlisted. For example, introducing the circular economy is mentioned in the core values of the curriculum, and one of the transversal competences of Finnish basic education is participation, influence, and building a sustainable future. However, in the social studies syllabus, climate change and the environment are downplayed. Teachers and textbook authors can follow the syllabus precisely while neglecting climate issues. This absence of climate issues in the core curriculum document is a case of a null curriculum. Climate enters the curriculum text mainly through frames such as “responsible consumption”. However, general activity and active citizenship are highlighted as central goals. In the analysis, we wanted to see if and how these absences and framings are reflected in the textbook discourse.

Another practical concept, related to the absent curriculum, is that of partial totalities (Wilkinson 2014). Perceiving the complex relationships between topics such as international trade and climate change is crucial to the understanding of current global crises. If topics such as the economy, trade, and international security are represented as detached from the environment, partial totalities are presented as totalities, which may obscure the inter-relationships between themes that are central for the syllabus of social studies.

Moreover, following Apple (1993), we will refer to the process of mentioning at several points. Using this concept, Apple refers to situations where the dominant ideological frameworks are not developed in depth or radically changed but some progressively oriented items are mentioned under the pressure of the changing world (Apple 1993, p. 56). The concept has descriptive power in the case of the climate crisis in textbooks: often, the crisis is mentioned as a perspective that should be acknowledged, without diving deeper into the problematic relationships between the crisis and prevailing social and economic systems and practices.

5. Materials and Methods

These data consist of ten social studies textbooks in total, printed in the years 2016–2021. Six of the textbooks are aimed at elementary school students (grades 4–6; 10–12 year olds): Me Nyt I [We now], Me Nyt II, Vaikuttaja I [The Influencer], Vaikuttaja II, Forum I and Forum II. Four are aimed at secondary school students (grade 9; 15-year-olds): Memo, Yhteiskuntaopin Taitaja [The Social Studies Knower], Forum 9, and I tiden 9 [In this time]. All data are in Finnish except for one book for 9th grade in Swedish, written for the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland (5%); this was the only available book originally written in Swedish.

In the analysis, following the two research questions presented above, we focused on several issues: (1) Representations of climate and environmental issues: when and how are they made visible, and when are they left invisible? What is written into text and, thus, constructed as relevant? (2) The ways in which the reader is addressed and how agency is constructed for the reader. The analysis consisted of three main steps. First, both authors examined the textbook data through qualitative close reading and by making observations based on the research questions. At this stage, each author individually analysed the textbooks with the conceptual toolkit introduced in Section 4. In the second step, the authors reviewed each other’s notes of the observations in relation to their own. This stage included discussion of the observations, data examples, and their interpretation in relation to the theoretical framework. In the third step, the categories were formed through a data-driven analysis; no ready-made matrix existed in the close reading and analysis of the observations. The findings were classified, and headings were developed for the formed categories.

6. Results

6.1. Ways of Constructing a Crisis and Agency: A Taxonomy

The representations of the climate crisis and agency in relation to it can be classified as shown in

Table 1. Overview of the categories of agency construction.

The Way of Orienting to Climate Crisis	Characterisation	Subcategories
(1) Constructing agency against the crisis	“there is a problem and there is agency”	(a) Individual ways to act; (b) Collective action; (c) Institutional impact-making.
(2) Stating the unsustainable nature of the current system	“there is a problem but there is no agency”	-
(3) Enlisting ways of making an impact in general	“there is no problem but there is agency”	-
(4) Representing the absence of crisis	“there is no problem and there is no agency”	(a) Detached totalities; (b) Lifestyle in the absence of crisis.

. Categories 1–4 and their subcategories are the results of discursive and rhetorical analysis. The analysis that has led to them is elaborated in the following subsections and illustrated with textbook excerpts.

6.2. Constructing Agency against the Crisis

In addressing the issues of climate change and other related environmental issues, there are passages that both acknowledge that there is a problem and represent a form of agency as available to the reader for dealing with this problem. In these passages, explicit ways of acting in response to the climate crisis are introduced.

6.2.1. Individual Choices

When the textbooks explicitly address ways of influencing the climate crisis, this is usually carried out from the perspective of an individual by introducing concrete actions such as purchase decisions and recycling. Consumption is framed as the predominant mode of agency in the climate crisis: there are numerous examples where buying is presented from the perspective of influencing the environment. For example, the ninth grade textbook Forum 9, in a chapter on economic growth, has a passage with the subheading “Economic growth and environmental problems”. In examining agency construction and textual interaction, this passage is particularly interesting since it proceeds from the systemic macro level to concrete everyday actions.

Not everyone thinks of economic growth in as positive terms as before. Climate change worries people, and economic growth makes the issue worse. This happens particularly when people consume commodities that produce pollution or require a great amount of energy. On the other hand, if growth is based on a growing demand for services, it does not cause harm to the environment in a similar way. Should one give a loved one a theatre ticket instead of a household appliance?

Luckily for us, consumption has changed in a more environmentally friendly direction. Recycling is common for people. Especially in cities, the sharing economy has become commonplace. Its basic idea is co-owning, borrowing, and renting. For example, instead of owning a car, one can co-own one and pay according to its use.

(Forum, 135)

The subchapter begins by acknowledging a major issue in economic growth: it is closely linked with climate change. So, there is a problem. There is also agency: in observing the representations of actions, we find buying (experience gifts such as theatre tickets instead of material things), recycling, and co-owning a car. From the perspective of textual interaction, we can observe the rhetorical pattern by which the reader is persuaded to view the presented means as meaningful. The pattern leading the reader through the issue consists of (a) bringing in a critical, climate-oriented perspective to the theme of economic growth, (b) listing different means by which we can mitigate this issue and simultaneously persuading the reader of their relevance. This can be seen as an example of the problem–solution pattern (Hoey 2001, p. 140).

How is the critical perspective brought into the text? It is framed in an indefinite voice: “not everyone”. Such a framing widens the dialogic space (see Martin and White 2005) of the text: it makes visible a viewpoint without marking others as less valid. The text progresses as this viewpoint is addressed with another: the problem can be confronted with an emphasis on non-material consumption. In this way, consumption does not in fact need to be reduced, if only the objects are well chosen. This orientation is offered to the reader first through a general assertion (it does not cause harm….), then through a rhetorical question (Should one give…?). What is noteworthy in the grammatical design is that the question is addressed to the so-called zero person (an open-reference personal construction frequent in Finnish—see Laitinen 2006, here translated with the pronoun “one”) with the modal verb “kannattaa” (‘to be worthwhile’, here translated with “should”). When combined, these choices simultaneously construct a wide responsive space for the reader and yet clarify the preferable line of action. This is a typical way for a textbook’s text to nudge the reader towards a kind of action without imposing significant interpersonal pressure, thus keeping the dialogic space wide (see also Satokangas and Mikander 2023).

The latter paragraph in the excerpt continues to address the reader with a reassuring statement in the first-person plural: “Fortunately for us, consumption has become more environmentally friendly than before”. The broad and indefinite ingroup “we” can here be interpreted as referring to all humankind living on the planet. The existence of these alternatives is presented as a reason for the reader to go on with their consumption with a good conscience. No one can say that the climate crisis has not been acknowledged, nor can anyone complain that specific actions against it have not been provided. The main point of the chapter on economic growth is that growth produces wellbeing—it is good to know that there are critical viewpoints that are to do with the planetary carrying capacity, but that issue is covered by buying the right kind of things, recycling, and taking part in the sharing economy.

Interestingly, the chapter is followed by assignments (p. 136) with a focus on elaborating on climate friendly actions such as buying (reflection on purchase decisions), not buying (the Buy Nothing campaign), recycling (making decorations out of plastic waste as a business idea), and the circular economy (becoming familiar with the concept). Assignments are one of the most central genres of a textbook, and they have a specific interactive function in that they direct the reader explicitly. For example, assigning the reader to explore the notion of the circular economy can be seen as genuinely widening how they can think about the economy with the climate crisis as a key motivator. Recycling, on the other hand, is an established index of environmentally friendly activity and, perhaps even more generally, an index of exemplary citizenship. Collecting rubbish from the streets (Memo, 173) can be seen as a fairly classic type of action through which an individual person can concretely affect the environment in a positive way.

Taking an overview of the textbooks, it can be concluded that purchase decisions are presented as a key means of gaining individual agency in relation to the climate crisis. What is noteworthy is that the environmental certificate sign is introduced through these data as an aid for making purchase decisions.

Different kinds of environment labels provide help in choosing environmentally friendly products.

(Memo, 103.)

For consumers, labels have been developed to tell about the product’s ethicality and environmental friendliness.

(Me nyt I, 76)

Consumption choices are supported by labels that can be found on various products.

(Forum 9, 92)

Various labels and certificates that reveal the origin or production methods of products have been created to help consumers.

(Taitaja, 89)

Labels on products make it easier to choose environmentally friendly products.

(Vaikuttaja II, 51)

These passages are followed by a list of various environment labels or accompanied by images of the labels with captions. The ability to interpret product markings and labels—consumer literacy—is repeatedly presented as part of an individual’s agency in relation to environmental issues. The character of a consumer is offered for the reader to identify with and receives help in making purchase decisions. Whereas the notion of the circular economy is given in the core curriculum and, thus, introducing the sharing economy is a relatively direct reflection of the curriculum, the repeated focus on environment-related product markings seems to be an example of how the textbooks interpret the more abstract goals in the curriculum and concretise them.

A case in point of treating consumption as a way to act on the climate crisis is provided in a supplementary chapter of Memo (in the book series’ nomenclature, these extras go by the name of “Zoom-texts”) that follows a chapter on marketing and advertising. In the Zoom-text, price formation in global trade is approached via an example of a t-shirt. A description of abstract and systemic trends in price formation is followed by a passage where the perspective turns to the individual consumer with an empowering tone.

A conscious consumer knows what they pay for in their t-shirt. It is ultimately consumers who decide what they buy… would a t-shirt that is produced in an environmentally friendly way sell for 35 euros…?

(Memo, 106)

A conscious consumer compares products before making a purchase decision…. Even a young person can make an impact through their consumption decisions (subheading)…. Revamping, revising, and reusing clothes is responsible consumption (caption).

(Taitaja, 88.)

The one making decisions is the consumer. The reader is persuaded to feel the power—the agency—in their hands: even a young person can influence the world around them through the means of consumption decisions. A preferable ideal character of a conscious consumer is offered for the reader to identify with. As a device for establishing textual interaction, such third-person characters are a repeated strategy that, on one hand, expresses a preferable way to act, yet, on the other hand, does not directly put pressure on the reader (as would be the case with an imperative verb form or other more straightforward resources of directivity). Following the excerpts above, the text in Taitaja goes on to introduce the concept of ethical consumption.

Ethical consumption pays attention to the circumstances under which the products have been manufactured and encourages consumers to deliberate carefully on their purchases.

(Taitaja, 89)

Interestingly, the grammatical subject is the idea: the concept does the mental act of paying attention and encouraging the consumer, who is the object of this encouragement. The space of the consumer continues to be wide: after all, they are only encouraged to do so. In this style of presentation, the available ideas are laid out in front the reader to choose from but are not imposed: the dialogic space in the text is wide and seemingly non-pressured.

Sometimes, a very limited mode of action in the climate crisis is written into small details within some larger entity. In I tiden 9, (p. 21), a chapter on the concepts of direct and representative democracy includes an image of a ballot from a Swiss referendum as an example of direct democracy. The topics to be voted on include car-free Sundays. These are small and detached yet visible cases of concrete actions, and they may be interpreted as examples of the process of mentioning.

Facing a global existential crisis, mere individual consumption choices may feel insufficient. Therefore, encouragement may also be needed to make the reader view the provided means as meaningful. I tiden has an interesting passage in which the reader is persuaded to see purchase choices as world-changing and addressing the crisis. The following excerpt is preceded by paragraphs where the reader is once again introduced to ways of acting on the climate crisis: choosing what to eat, recycling waste, buying ecologically, and avoiding flying, thus guiding big corporations through these choices.

Single individual consumption choices might feel like very small and meaningless actions in terms of the big picture, but when enough people are inspired by each other to make ecological and ethical lifestyle decisions, eventually, a critical mass builds up that can have a great impact on the world’s political and economic decision-makers.

(I tiden 9, 172)

The passage employs a concession pattern (Thompson and Zhou 2000): first, the reader is met with a concession (“as you may think, these means are somewhat limited, I know”), followed by an assertion (“however, if you are patient, the world can become better little by little”). This encouraging persuasion is performed by anticipating a feeling of powerlessness and then countering the explicated discouraging view. The reader is convinced to believe patiently that these individual consumption choices are sufficient means of influencing the powerful people making actual big decisions. The empowering tone in the text gives the reader an inflated belief in individual consumption as the main source for change. This perspective risks putting off other types of collective action or pressures by turning the focus towards patiently consuming ethically.

6.2.2. Collective Action

Other, more direct and collective ways of influencing are also made visible in the textbooks. Examples of collective action on climate and the environment include non-governmental organisations working on nature protection and ecological sustainability (Memo, p. 172; Forum, 9, pp. 167–69). In general, NGOs might be viewed as a relatively safe frame through which to act on climate issues—such action is not too political but sufficiently innocent and widely acceptable. Even a more abstract global movement, the degrowth movement, is introduced in Memo (pp. 147–48).

However, some NGO actions may be not only markedly political but even illegal. A passage that is specifically interesting from the perspective of textual interaction is one in Memo that addresses illegal actions by animal activists and Greenpeace activists. The Zoom-text (see above) follows a chapter on non-governmental organisations and discusses illegal activism under the following heading: “Can one break the law for a good cause?” It introduces the examples of animal activists freeing encaged foxes and minks and a Greenpeace action on oil drilling in the Arctic region by the Finnish activist Sini Saarinen, a case that received wide media attention in Finland in 2013. It simultaneously makes illegal action visible and, therefore, imaginable and persuades the reader to view it as not acceptable.

The defenders of fur farming plead to the law while the objectors to fur farming want to change the law. At the same time, fundamental citizen rights are opposed in the dispute. Which is more important: freedom of trade or freedom of speech? Animal activists have ended up in court because of their actions and received punishments for breaking the law. The judicial system has viewed that, in society, one must act according to the prevailing laws and individuals cannot define on their own basis which laws are allowed to be broken.

(Memo, 184)

In the passage, a wide dialogic space is created by heteroglossia: there are several voices in the text voicing opposite views (see Thompson 1996; Martin and White 2005). The explicitly labelled voices are defenders of fur farming and objectors to fur farming/animal activists. The third voice presented is that of the judicial system. Illegal activistic actions are introduced and, therefore, presented as existent and possible alternatives for the reader. However, the verdicts have been pronounced on the activists according to the law. The textual structure is at ideological work here: the last word is given to the voice of the judicial system. Interestingly, the juxtaposition is constructed between freedom of trade and freedom of speech; animal rights are not viewed as a relevant or even an existent perspective.

This rhetorical pattern embodies the tension between the role of a social studies textbook as a device for socialising pupils into citizenry, on one hand, and actions spurred by the urgency of the climate crisis, on the other hand. Even if the job of the textbook is to support the reader’s growth into an active agent, its job is also to educate the reader about the rules of the state and guide them to abide by the law. The fact that social change has often been the result of some people breaking the current law to prove a point (also known as civil disobedience) is not presented as imaginable in this context.

The excerpts on fur activists and Greenpeace are examples of presenting specific advocacy groups as possibilities to influence climate issues. Another such advocacy group are the Sámi people. The climate crisis is discussed in I tiden, where the relationship between the Sámi people and climate change is considered:

The biggest threat to Sámi traditional livelihood today is global warming [...]. The Sámi Parliament has taken a strong stand to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to curb global warming

(I tiden, 83)

This is an illuminating case of totality construction (Wilkinson 2014): specific themes are connected textually, i.e., made parts of the same totality of things. This specific connection between indigenous peoples and climate may be evoked by the visibility of indigenous activism that has focused on climate. As the Sámi Parliament is constructed into an agent, this example comes close to the category of institutional impact-making. The same applies to NGOs such as Greenpeace. However, the difference lies in how these are presented in relation to the reader: ways of collective action are introduced as an array of available resources, and the reader is addressed as someone weighing them as options—this is particularly visible in persuading the reader to refrain from illegal action. Institutional impact-making is viewed from outside as simply happening, and the text does not negotiate with the reader in the same way. We turn now to this institution-based perspective on agency.

6.2.3. Institutional Impact-Making

Part of the task of social studies textbooks is to introduce the functions and capabilities of various institutions in society. This is also reflected in relation to the climate crisis. When examining the representations of agency in relation to the crisis, expounding the abilities and instruments of institutions to make an impact takes shape as a category where agency is framed differently from individual people’s actions. This agency is imposed on nation states and private companies.

In textbook discourse, states have one way in particular to influence climate and environmental issues: taxation. In Taitaja, the endeavours of the state are explicated in passive voice: the state strives to achieve a goal (for individual people’s purchase decisions to become more environmentally friendly) through the means of excise taxation.

Excise taxes are intended to affect people’s purchase decisions, when the prices of unhealthy or environmentally harmful products are raised.

(Taitaja, 133)

Similarly, in Memo, the actions of state are described in the passive voice.

Excise taxes in the prices of alcohol, tobacco, gas, electricity, and soft drinks are also included in indirect taxes. They are also called protection taxes, since their purpose is to decrease the use of the products and direct consumption towards a healthier and more environmentally friendly direction.

(Memo, 151)

The same pattern of goal and achievement is constructed by lexical and grammatical choices: the purpose is to guide the consumption of individuals, and the means is taxation (on Goal-Achievement pattern, see Hoey 2001, pp. 145–50). In both these excerpts, the aims of the state—mental processes—are expressed in a passive voice, which represents the impersonal nature of government activities. In terms of representation, the declarative tone of describing rational goal-achievement solutions in a passive voice depicts political actions as technical and apolitical, as if this reasoning were shared unanimously by all decision-makers. Yet, in Finnish political discourse, the taxation of petrol has been a hotly debated theme in recent years, and the taxation of alcohol has also gone through significant changes in opposing directions. There is an interesting divide between the rational, technical image painted by the textbook and the reality of politically heated debate between contesting ideologies and, therefore, the varying decisions made by different governments. This divide can be seen as an example of the non-political presentation style typical of social studies textbooks identified by Löfström and van den Berg (2013).

In the next subchapter of Memo, the perspective turns to an individual consumer.

Everyone must reflect on their consumption choices more thoroughly, which may decrease the wasteful consumption of natural resources.

(Memo, 151)

The grammatical devices of personal reference and modality are put to work in articulating the chain of action: as a consequence of the rational tax decisions of the state, everyone must reflect on their consumption choices. The state-level decisions, thus, function compellingly to influence the mental actions of all citizens. However, this thinking only may have practical consequences for individual consumption habits. Similarly, a chain of causality between actors is explicated later in the chapter, when the relationship between a state and private companies is addressed in the caption to a picture of windmills.

The state can aim to direct corporate investments by means of taxation. The construction of environmentally friendly wind power has been supported through tax reliefs.

(Memo, 153)

In the examples, we can see how a causal relationship is built textually between specific institutional actions of the state and individual consumption choices, as well as investments made by corporations. Something is carried out at the state level to influence people (consumers) and corporations to act in a way that mitigates the climate crisis. This chain of action is presented as technical and rational in nature. As articulations of agency in a politically and ideologically heated theme, these textbook representations provide only a limited view of how states actually work in relation to the crisis and how these actions are influenced by citizens.

When examining how agency on climate crisis is constructed—how climate issues can be influenced and by whom—one result is that such agency is constructed for corporations. For example, environmentally friendly actions can be performed by companies within the forestry and energy industries (I tiden 50–51). In Taitaja (112), environmental responsibility is demanded of companies, and felling forests and palm oil production are given as examples of harmful actions that companies undertake as part of their business. The catastrophic state of rainforests is highlighted: “Rainforests are being destroyed at an accelerating pace, for example because of palm oil production” (Taitaja, 112): a case of acknowledging the problematic state of current practices (see next section) and the process of mentioning.

What does the textual interaction look like in these passages? In addition to describing the consequences of the current actions of corporations, the textbook requires certain actions from them, using a zero person reference.

Natural resources must be used responsibly and the carrying capacity of nature must be taken into consideration.

(Taitaja, 112)

Corporations are viewed from outside and demands are voiced, yet there is no way of ensuring that they will act in this way. Companies may act on the climate crisis by doing business in a responsible way; simultaneously, the undemocratic nature of corporations as power-exercising entities becomes clear. However, the text presents a chain of causal relationships where an individual can affect the companies’ actions through consumption choices. According to the textbooks, customer desires are a way of making producers act more responsibly: for example, organic food consumption can encourage farmers to change to organic farming (Memo, 41). The power of big multinational corporations is acknowledged in a descriptive tone (e.g., “Big companies have a lot of power”, heading, Taitaja 137). While democracy is framed as the self-evident backdrop of active citizenship and agency from curricula to textbooks, the fact is that power in relation to the climate crisis is exercised by actors outside the reach of democratic decision-making.

6.3. Stating the Unsustainable Nature of the Current System

On the basis of the analysis, we identify a category of textbook passages where the climate crisis is recognised, but in a framing that does not provide any agency for change. In these passages, the climate crisis is mentioned and presented as an issue of which to be aware. One example of this is the energy sector, as presented in the grade 9 books. The fact that most of the energy consumed in Finland comes from non-renewable energy sources is simply mentioned, such as in I tiden (51). Another textbook includes the headline “Economic growth brings much joy” with an accompanying text that initially mentions the problematic aspects of using GDP as an economic indicator, since it disregards factors such as environmental impact (Forum, 134–135). After this statement, it continues with the following:

Every country has a general goal of a yearly economic growth of a few percent. If it succeeds in this, the standard of living increases, meaning that we constantly have more money to spend on goods and services. [...] Economic growth also benefits states and municipalities, because they get plenty of tax income. With the tax income they can, for instance, fix mouldy schools or increase student grants, so all Finns gain in some way from an increasing economy.

(Forum, 135)

After this statement, the text brings up the environmental impacts of economic growth, suggesting that “Not everyone thinks of economic growth in as positive terms as before. Climate change worries people, and economic growth makes the issue worse (Forum, 135)”. This passage was addressed above from the viewpoint of individual action, but let us take another look at it from a macro perspective. As seen above, the text goes on to suggest that buying theatre tickets instead of household appliances could be a suggestion for economic growth that does not strain the environment and, thus, constructs individual agency for the reader to act on the problematic situation. What makes this passage relevant from the perspective of this category as well is that not only does it provide (limited) ways to act on the unsustainability of economic growth but suggests that a change has in fact happened:

Luckily for us, consumption has changed in a more environmentally friendly direction. Recycling is common for people. Especially in cities, the sharing economy has become commonplace. Its basic idea is co-owning, borrowing, and renting. For example, instead of owning a car, one can co-own one and pay according to its use.

(Forum, 135)

Returning to the linguistic choices made in this passage, we see that the change is depicted in the present perfect tense: consumption has changed and the sharing economy has become commonplace. Moreover, the aspired state of recycling as a prevalent practice is depicted in present tense: it already is common. The chapter, therefore, follows an interesting pattern. Like a pendulum, it swings from stating that economic growth brings much joy to stating that GDP fails to cover all relevant aspects. This is followed by a very convincing description of the benefits of economic growth, using phrases such as “Economic growth also benefits states and municipalities” and the unquestionable “all Finns gain”. After stating this perspective, the text continues to the environmental impact, only to find that the needed change has, at least partly, already happened. The agency left for the reader is limited to following the advice given in the text (to buy theatre tickets instead of household appliances—as if this choice were a relevant one). Yet, simultaneously, these practices are presented as already predominant. Therefore, basically, there is nothing significant to be carried out anymore and no notable changes to be made.

The textbook seems to mention climate issues in a way that resembles a box that can be ticked, as if addressing the problematic aspects is necessary, but with the key message of economic growth being beneficial as central. Several of the grade 9 textbooks share this perspective. One textbook includes a chapter about safety and fears in everyday life (Memo, pp. 234–39). It opens with a graph of different fears that young people reported in 2011. Environmental disasters is on the list, as well as many others (the most popular ones being a lack of money, losing a loved one, unemployment). The chapter focuses at length on how to overcome fears and prevent accidents, but there is no reference to climate or the environment in the chapter. A reader who is worried about the climate crisis does not receive any tools with which to address the issue.

Another aspect of a sense of crisis without agency is portrayed in a grades 4–6 textbook (Me nyt I, 70–71). This approach is somewhat different. The topic is consumer choice, and the chapter presents a fictional story where two classmates, Fatima and Vivian, discuss ethical issues in a clothes shop. Fictional storylines and characters are typical of primary school social studies textbooks, reflecting the curricular aim of the subject in grades 4–6 to be relevant to the everyday life of the pupils. Fictionality makes possible the representation of different views and voices and examples of concrete actions. Here, the girls ask the clerk about the origin of a dress, referring to labour conditions and environmental sustainability. The clerk refers to the ethical guidelines available on the company webpage. As a response to this, the chapter ends with the following:

Vivian murmurs out loud: Is it possible to make cheap clothes, while taking into account everything from environmental protection to child protection at the same time?

(Me nyt I, 71)

The choice to end the text with Vivian’s comments provides a critical perspective for classroom discussions. Fictional characters enable a plurality of autonomous voices in the text, voicing different ideological stances (see Bakhtin 1984). In this chapter, the reader is expected to take a critical stance towards the clothes company policy, as provided by the clerk in the story. The issue of sustainability is highly present, but there is no sense of agency, other than a murmuring condemnation. Textual structure can complete ideological work in representation: weight and visibility in the textbook and, therefore, in the knowledge architecture is created by placing critical perspectives at the end of chapters as nice-to-know additions or “mandatory” critical notes on the subject.

6.4. Enlisting Ways of Making Impact in General

In constructing agency, a discernible category is formed by passages where ways of influencing in general are presented. Specific chapters are dedicated to different means of making an impact, which mirrors the curriculum and the emphasised status of the notion of influencing there (FNAE 2014, p. 418). Actions that are presented as ways of influencing include voting in elections and running for office, communicating convincingly through various media, consumption choices, and organising an information campaign (see Mikander and Satokangas 2023). These general means of impact-making can be employed in climate-related actions, but the reader must proactively designate the climate crisis as the problem or topic upon which to be acted. The text provides resources, but the thematic initiative must come from outside the text.

In addition, presenting an individual citizen’s capabilities and rights in the legal system (Memo, p. 200–202; Taitaja, p. 28–29) falls under this category: the rights and opportunities of a citizen can also be utilised to, for example, organise collective action for a system change. The right to express one’s opinion and freedom of assembly have been passionately discussed in Finland in the 2020s as climate-related movements have organised demonstrations in various forms. Knowing the rights of a citizen can be seen as a useful prerequisite for acting on the climate crisis.

6.5. Representing the Absence of Crisis

6.5.1. Detached Totalities

The climate crisis is a complex global problem that is closely linked to global economic and social structures. Understanding such inter-relationships is crucial for a citizen to be able to perceive the world and act in a sustainable way in accordance with the curriculum goals (FNAE 2014, p. 418). At the same time, in pedagogical texts and textbook discourse, the abstract representation and structuring of knowledge into delineated entities is central to providing pupils with concepts with which to talk about society and the world. A relatively established way of demarcating domains that are central to educating pupils about society, such as the economy, (national and global) security, systems of government, international trade, welfare state, human rights, and the legal system, can be found in the textbooks. The crisis is mostly absent in the other domains of society. The various themes can be seen as territories: the environment and climate belong to their demarcated places in the knowledge architecture of the textbook. Following the territorial metaphor, as the climate crisis is a separate entity, it has been enclosed in reservations.

An example of detaching the economy from its ecological preconditions is the representation of an abstract, decontextualised circulation of the economy (see, e.g., Raworth 2017 for a critique of this image). In Forum 9, the section called the world of the economy begins with a spread-wide image of a circle depicting the economy (pp. 130–131). In the image, three points (corporations, households, and the state and municipalities) are connected by arrows depicting flows of money. In Memo (p. 145), the closed circle of the economy is presented in a diagram depicting the national economy, which consists of banks, corporations, households, and the state and municipalities. In these images, the economy is not connected to planet Earth or any other environment. Even though “[w]hen talking about the national economy, it is essential to understand that the state is but one part of a larger whole”, this larger whole does not reach as far as the environment, or at least it is not essential to understand this issue. The sentence continues: “where corporations play the most important role” (Memo, p. 145). In terms of textual interaction, the text addresses the reader with a zero-person reference (on the grammatical concept, see above and Laitinen 2006) in explaining with an authoritative voice which knowledge is relevant. What is not relevant is absent.

The detached economic circulation is represented many times in various ways in the textbooks, which underscores the hegemonic status that it has in thinking of economic systems. It is an apparently entrenched way of depicting the economy as not being connected with planetary preconditions. The economy and its absent connection to the planetary crisis is a case in point of a representation where a partial totality is represented “as if it were a complete curricular ‘totality’” (Wilkinson 2014, p. 434).

Similarly, discussing national and global security as detached from the crisis omits a widely acknowledged relationship between security and climate change. Even international trade, the traffic of goods around the world, can be addressed without mentioning climate issues in the chapter (Memo, pp. 136–141, I tiden, pp. 52–53). In Memo (pp. 136–141), six pages are devoted to international trade, without any reference to questions of sustainability. Instead, the cheap price of shipping containers is commended (p. 137) and the importance of oil imports for Finnish industries is highlighted (p. 138). In fact, “Life without fruit, computers, trips abroad, foreign TV programmes and other products and services is hard to imagine” (p. 139). Here, the zero-person perspective is used as the strategy of textual interaction—an unsustainable lifestyle becomes not only normalised, but the only possible one, since an alternative is unimaginable. The perspective comes close to the representation of an individual lifestyle (see Section 6.5.2).

In terms of enabling and constraining action and thinking, constructing the absence of the crisis through partial totalities can be seen as constraining through making the ecological perspective marginal and irrelevant. The type of textual interaction used in the depiction of a world with an absent crisis is monoglossic (Martin and White 2005): constructing an image of the world without reference to differing views, often in the third person without explicitly addressing the reader.

A specific area of an absent crisis is the group of passages in which the reader is encouraged to imagine the future job market in the textbooks for grades 4–6. Imagining the future is guided by techno-optimism.

[In the future, a]eroplanes will not necessarily need pilots on vacation flights.

(Forum II, 102)

-Perhaps space travel has become common and rockets need ticket inspectors, Igor discovers.

(Me nyt I, 51)

In the frame of imagining the future, climate or environmental issues are not relevant. This view is indeed optimistic: the climate crisis has disappeared and flying great distances continues. The job market is one example of a topic under which partial totalities are presented as totalities.

In some cases, when presenting the topic of global trade, the current system’s lack of ecological sustainability is addressed at the end of the chapter as an addition to the topic. This is a discernible strategy of inserting the climate crisis into the textual organisation of the textbooks. It can be viewed as an example of the process of mentioning. The unsoundness of the foundations of the described system is not placed as an overall framework in which to approach it, but more as a mandatory note on the subject. In placing critical perspectives as additions, textual structure is again put to ideological work.

6.5.2. Lifestyle in the Absence of Crisis

When analyzing textbook references the climate crisis, the most notable point is its inexistence in the framing of individual lifestyles and everyday practices. When sustainability or climate questions are not in direct focus, these perspectives tend to disappear. Descriptions of ordinary lives, dreams, and future visions regularly include unsustainable habits such as holiday flights and meat consumption. In the textbooks for grades 4–6, there are several examples of this issue. An advertisement for holidays in Thailand is used as an example of more expensive (but not less sustainable) consumption than a cruise to Stockholm (Forum II, p. 82). The topic of economy opens, in Me nyt I (pp. 42–43), with a collage of consumer goods, such as a gaming console, a camera, a phone, and clothes, and an assignment for the readers to discuss in groups what they would buy “if money was not an obstacle”. Here, there is an added sentence stating that they can also refer to immaterial things, such as friendship or humour. The images, however, clearly turn the focus to material things.

The textbook Vaikuttaja II includes, as its very first text, a story about Minttu, a girl, who receives a postcard:

The mail had come. Minttu placed the magazines, the ads, a few bills, and a postcard onto the table. Minttu read the card: “Greetings from Florida! It is wonderful and warm here. Love, Grandma and Grandpa.” I must remember to thank them for the card, Minttu thought.

(Vaikuttaja II, 8)

Traveling, and particularly traveling far, is described as a normal and desirable way of life. In the textbooks, aeroplanes act as symbols of a desirable lifestyle where the world is open to individuals who want to make the most of their life. Further on in the same book, the protagonist Daniela argues with her father in the car. Her classmates are spending the holidays abroad:

Linda is going to Thailand and Amina to London. And where do I get to go? To the [nearby] sledding hill. The talking stopped. The only thing to be heard was the clicking of the car blinker.

(Vaikuttaja II, 52)

In the assignment following the text, the reader is asked who they side with, Daniela or her father, and why. Here, a reader who wants to do so can point out that the nearby sledding hill is a more sustainable option, but this is not something that the textbook points out. What is significant is that the story on the desire to fly to Thailand is presented in the frame of personal economy, and the perspective of climate crisis is, thus, invisible. What the story of Daniela and her dad implies is that taking care of one’s personal finances leads to a life where one can fly abroad instead of visiting boring local resorts. The desirable lifestyle is often presented to the reader via fictional examples and characters. Moreover, in the assignments following the story of Daniela, the reader is explicitly prompted to identify with this character or to side with the “boring” father.

7. Discussion

We begin this section by briefly summarising the results and then go on to discuss their pedagogical, transformative, and social implications. In this article, we have approached social studies textbooks as powerful representations of imaginable agency. We have examined agency in relation to the climate crisis as it is constructed within the text. Articulations (and absences) of the crisis and ways of taking action on it have been analysed as means of enabling and constraining social and political imagination: What is thinkable, what can and should (not) be done? Do the textbooks mediate a notion of crisis through discursive means (Patrona and Thornborrow 2017) in the first place? Drawing on the tradition of discourse analysis and utilising the analytic lens of textual interaction, we have mapped and structured different ways of orienting towards the climate crisis and environmental justice. A text analytic close reading has provided a concrete perspective on the politics of the textbook and the role of the textbook as a curator of official knowledge for facing a planetary crisis.

To structure the variation in agency construction in the textbook data, we derived a data-driven taxonomy. The first category comprises passages where the available actions in relation to climate and environment are explicitly introduced or addressed. Means provided for an individual person to act predominantly include consumption in various forms, with a notable emphasis on environment labels. Collective action in the form of non-governmental organisations and movements is also presented as a potential way to act. Moreover, textbooks introduce ways by which the climate crisis and the environmental crisis are acted upon on at the institutional level, such as taxation by the state and corporate practices. Agency is placed in these institutional structures, which are introduced to the reader with a view from outside. Directing individual people and corporations towards environmentally friendly action is presented as neutral, technical, and self-evident decision-making. Causal chains are constructed between, on one hand, taxation and individual consumers and corporations, and, on the other hand, individual consumption choices and corporations. Individual people can predominantly influence corporations’ actions with the means that is predominant in textbook discourse: consumption choices.

The second category comprises passages where the text mentions and acknowledges the climate crisis but does not address ways of acting upon it. Often these passages can be conceptualised as processes of mentioning: the crisis or its implications are not engaged with in depth, but a mention is provided under the pressure of the changing world (Apple 1993, p. 56). The third category consists of passages that introduce ways of making an impact but where the climate crisis is not an explicit topic.

The fourth category, absent crisis, is based on observations of the exclusion of the climate crisis when portraying society and the world. Through this category, we can see how the economy, politics, decision-making, security, influencing, and other themes central to social studies are addressed and introduced without reference to the existential threat to all societies in the world. The analysis differentiates between abstract and individual perspectives: the perspective of detached totalities in constructing subject-specific knowledge and depicting lifestyles in the absence of crisis.

In closely reading the textbooks as textual interaction, we have also portrayed the rhetoric of a social studies textbook in constructing agency. A wide dialogic space is typical of the voice of the textbook, and it is created by devices such as impersonality, zero-person references, and ideally behaving third-person characters (e.g., a conscious consumer). In this way, no direct pressure is imposed on the reader to act in any certain way but an array of available forms of actions is laid out before them. However, in places, more direct ways of engaging the reader are employed: rhetorical effort is put into persuading the reader to view illegal environmental activism as non-desirable or individual consumption choices as significant despite their apparent lack of effect. How this persuasion is executed resembles the way in which, for example, the social studies textbook reader is convinced of the importance of voting and the dangers of voting passivity with marked dialogical effort (Mikander and Satokangas 2024). These passages are concrete examples of how textbook discourse draws an image of the active citizen, called for in the curriculum, on a concrete, sentence-to-sentence level.

The overall image of Finnish social studies textbooks’ orientations to the climate crisis and ways of acting on it is this: the crisis is absent in most representations of the domains of society. Some topics, such as global trade, evoke passages where the crisis and the unsustainability of the current economic systems are acknowledged. The textbooks provide different perspectives on doing concrete things about the crisis, introducing mainly individual consumption choices but also collective forms of action as available alternatives. Rousell and Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles (2020) point out that the scientific, social, ethical, and political complexities of climate change call for educational approaches that empower children and young people to meaningfully engage with the issue, making agency central.

Notably, comparing the results with those of a study of US science textbooks (Román and Busch 2016), we find no trace of denialism. The existence of the climate disaster as a phenomenon or humans’ effect on it are never denied but often only ignored. On the other hand, Norwegian and South African geography textbooks include international agreements as solutions to the crisis and, therefore, outline a clearly more systemic and global level of action (Trædal et al. 2022). The results are also interesting in relation to research on teachers’ views on textbooks. According to the survey findings of Morote and Hernández (2023), Spanish teachers are not happy with how geography textbooks address climate change. However, teachers report that they rely on textbooks in teaching, even though answers vary significantly. In the words of Morote and Hernández, “even though the teachers believe that this phenomenon is not treated adequately in the textbooks, they use it as their main source of information.”

In approaching absence in textbooks, it is worth looking into practices of exclusion. Wilkinson (2014), in introducing the concept of an absent curriculum, empirically observed the experiences of exclusion of Muslim boys in relation to the absence of Muslims in English history teaching. In the study at hand, the marginalised position is defined not by religious or cultural identity but by orientation to action, namely the position of a reader who wishes for action on the ongoing climate crisis—as many young people do.

In topicalising ways of life, the perspective of desires became central: What is presented as desirable and tempting? Is an ecologically sustainable life always tedious, and are long flights a sign of a good life? In the fictional passages of primary school textbooks they seem to be, but it is worth reflecting on whether these ideals are going through a change or whether social groups are differentiating regarding them.

8. Conclusions

Returning to the departure points of this article, we can ponder the influence of textbooks on the burning planet in the 2020s. How do the representations and rhetoric of textbooks reported in this study enable or constrain our capacity to act to stop the climate crisis or our social imagination more generally?

The description of rational political decision-making in relation to the crisis is worth reflecting on in relation with the reported political passivity among youth (see Mikander and Satokangas 2024). If decision-making is represented as self-evidently rational, cognitive dissonance may appear in the reader who simultaneously follows political publicity where even environmentally hostile decisions are made and supported. In Finland, as well as elsewhere, popular populist movements often have anti-climate action as one of their main driving forces and sources of support. The evident divide between these representations and reality may, for its part, contribute to cynicism and disbelief in democracy and politics.

The climate crisis is a tense topic in education, not least because of another apparent source of cognitive dissonance that springs from the global system, where the current economic structures are treated as being rational, while the scientific consensus clearly indicates that this system is unsustainable. As Karsgaard and Davidson (2021) point out, pupils tend to struggle with a growing awareness of the seriousness of climate change combined with a limited set of problem-solving tools provided by education—a dilemma that requires more of a systemic approach beyond individual action and including a critical historical view.

How might this situation be pedagogically explained in a textbook, a forum determined by the demands of consensus knowledge and scientific foundation? Scientific facts show that we must make fundamental systemic changes, but the reader is assured that they can go on with their lives in much the same way, particularly if they buy products with environmental labels. For example, historical accounts of actual systemic changes achieved through strikes, demonstrations, disobedience, and other collective actions would widen the range of the imaginable. Now, the current status quo with partial totalities represented as totalities is depicted as permanent and outside of historical processes. If the scientific consensus is in fact too radical for textbooks, we must ask ourselves what education is for in the first place.

9. The Data

Forum I = Hämäläinen E., Kohi A., Päivärinta K., Turtiainen S., Vihervä V. and Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. 2016. FORUM Yhteiskuntaoppi I. Helsinki: Otava.

Forum II = Hämäläinen E., Kohi A., Päivärinta K., Turtiainen S., Vihervä V. and Kustannusosakeyhtiö Otava. 2016. FORUM Yhteiskuntaoppi II. Helsinki: Otava.

Forum 9 = Hämäläinen, Eenariina, Kohi, Antti, Päivärinta, Kimmo and Vihervä, Vesa 2018. Forum 9. Yhteiskuntaoppi. Helsinki: Otava.

I tiden 9 [In this time] = Bonäs, J. and Strang, J. 2018. I tiden 9. Helsinki: Schildts and Söderströms.

Me Nyt I [We now] = Palmqvist R., van den Berg M., Rantala J. and Lasten Keskus ja Kirjapaja Oy. 2018. ME NYT I yhteiskuntaoppi. Helsinki: Edukustannus.

Me Nyt II = Palmqvist R., van den Berg M., Rantala J. and Lasten Keskus ja Kirjapaja Oy. 2021. ME NYT II yhteiskuntaoppi. Helsinki: Edukustannus.

Memo = Hanska, Jussi, Ranta, Inari, Rikala, Juhapekka and Tirkkonen, Jari 2018. Memo yhteiskuntaoppi. Helsinki: Edita.

Vaikuttaja I [The Influencer] = Bruun J., Hieta P., Kokkonen O., Laurila M., Mälkönen S and Sanoma Pro Oy. 2021. Vaikuttaja I. Alakoulun yhteiskuntaoppi. Helsinki: Sanoma Pro.

Vaikuttaja II = Bruun J., Hieta P., Kokkonen O., Laurila M., Mälkönen S and Sanoma Pro Oy. 2021. Vaikuttaja II. Alakoulun yhteiskuntaoppi. Helsinki: Sanoma Pro.

Yhteiskuntaopin Taitaja [The Social Studies Knower] = Hieta, P., Johansson, M., Kokkonen, O., Piekkola-Fabrin, H., Virolainen, M and Sanoma Pro Oy. 2018. Yhteiskuntaopin Taitaja 9. Helsinki: Sanoma Pro.