Textbooks as Tools for Inclusion or Exclusion: Representation of Socially Vulnerable Groups in Secondary School Textbooks

This chapter analysed the representationsRepresentations of the challenges of socialSocial inequality and inclusionInclusion in schoolSchools textbooksTextbooks of SocialSocial StudiesStudies. A comparison of textbooksTextbooks published in the last decade and earlier made it possible to present trends in the transformationTransformations of normative discourse in relation to different categories of vulnerable childrenChild. The identified trends are explained in the contextContexts of the contentContents of legislative changesChanges in RussianRussian socialSocial and educationalEducational policyPolicy. This makes it possible to clarify the nature of moral attitudes which may be transmitted to childrenChild in a hidden curriculumCurriculum. Considering textbooksTextbooks as a section of literature that demonstrates not only the dominant paradigm of a particular discipline but also the discourse of power, we first pose a series of researchResearch questions and present evidence from empiricalEmpirical researchResearch. Thereafter, examples of the representationRepresentations of sociallySocially vulnerable groups (first people with disabilitiesDisabilities, then people with low socio-economic status) are analysed in relation to socialSocial policyPolicy measures taken. In conclusionConclusion, the findings are presented. Those could be of particular interest to countriesCountries in the post-soviet educationEducation space with a similar educationalEducational background and policyPolicy contextContexts.