Developing Social Awareness: An Investigation into the Norwegian Curriculum in light of Socially and Culturally Diverse Picturebooks

Abstract

The new online connections and globalisation of the world lead to multiple interactions between different cultures. These new interactions led to Norway introducing a new curriculum in 2020 (LK20) that elucidates the new and globalised society more than previous curriculums. Today's education has to promote skills of thinking, communication and coexisting with others. These are necessary skills pupils need to become the good citizens that a society needs to evolve. LK20 does not adequately explain the different ideals and goals; they give no explicit instructions for teachers. Theory of social awareness can help teachers to understand how one might achieve the wanted results in education. Therefore, we have chosen to investigate how teachers, through the social awareness theory, can interpret LK20 and understand its ideals and goals. We have also looked at six aspects of social awareness; inclusion, reflective thinking, implicit bias, identity, emotional connection and cultural position, and connected them to four different picturebooks; Pink is for Boys, Where Are You From? Sulwe and The Color of Us. With this in mind, we have chosen to write our master thesis on how social awareness can guide teachers to help pupils develop positive social skills regarding the core curriculum and the English competence aims. Conclusively, we found that through affiliation and representation in picturebooks, teachers can educate their pupils to think reflectively on ideas about identity, cultural positions, emotional connections and inclusivity to minimise actions of implicit bias. These aspects within the theory are represented strongly in LK20. We also deduced that picturebooks contribute to pupils gaining social awareness, which relates to the understanding of how people live, think and act based on their cultural heritage and social position through the representations of diverse characters’ narratives. In conclusion of our thesis, the social awareness theory can be a guide to understanding the goals and ideals presented in the core curriculum and the English competence aims, and culturally and socially diverse picturebooks can be tools to use as teaching materials in education to achieve the educational goals and help pupils develop positive social skills.