Over the Hills and Far Away - Imageries of Norway and Immigration in the Norwegian Language Textbooks for Adults

Globalization and population movements create challenges for the education at the national level. This also applies to the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden), where the education has traditionally promoted social integration. Alongside comprehensive education, also adult education has become an important instrument in the integration of immigrants.

In this study, we examine the issue of cultural integration in the adult language teaching textbooks in Norway. In our study Norway represents a Nordic welfare state regime (Esping Andersen 1991), where the social equality and economic well-being are at the top of the world, but where the development of society and economy is also dependent on foreign labor and their succesfull integration.

Theoretically, Norwegian language textbook for adults are didactic tools dealing with the grammar. At the same time, textbooks are also boundary objects and re-representations of the society. They mediate different expectations of the society while simoultaneously describeing the everyday life from the point of view of the expected learner (Hansen & Puustinen 2021).Our research data consist of two Norgegian language book used in the language courses for adults moving to Norway. The research methdology is based on critical discourse analysis and idea of texts as discoursive and sosiocultural practise (Fairclough 1995). Our analysis focuses on the ways in which pictures in textbooks describe Norway and everyday life of immigrants who are representing different ethnicities and cultures.