Anthropocentrism in schoolbooks

How are animals, their habitats and their relationship with humans portrayed in Austrian textbooks and what world view does this convey? A new research project at the University of Innsbruck, funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, aims to examine how animals are presented linguistically and visually in textbooks. Under the title Anthropocentrism in Textbooks, the interdisciplinary team led by Associate Professor Gabriela Kompatscher (Department of Classical Philology and Neo-Latin Studies), together with Assistant Professor Reinhard Heuberger (Department of English), Dr Reingard Spannring (Institute of Education) and Dr Ulrike Schmid (Education, Human- Animal Studies), is investigating the extent to which current biology and environmental education textbooks (still) contain perspectives that focus purely on humans and thus structurally perpetuate anthropocentric patterns of thought. The study therefore asks whether and how animals are integrated into teaching materials as an essential part of the natural world or whether they are rendered invisible. The starting point is the 2023 curriculum reform, which renamed the subject of biology and environmental studies in Austria to biology and environmental education. The new generation of textbooks now bears the addition according to the new curriculum but how much new thinking is really in them? The project aims to find out whether and how the depictions of animals and their habitats actually contribute to education for sustainable development. Textbooks are more than neutral conveyors of knowledge, explains project manager Gabriela Kompatscher. They convey ideologies and values and shape our image of the world and animals. Our analysis aims to reveal which images, concepts and hierarchies about animals and the natural world are conveyed. This is also an urgent educational concern against the backdrop of planetary threats such as climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental exploitation. The study combines critical discourse analysis, ecolinguistics and human-animal studies and provides an empirically sound basis for reflecting on teaching materials from an animal ethics perspective. In addition to analysing sociocultural attributions of meaning, a key goal is to create a compendium that will provide guidance and support to actors in educational practice and policy in order to inspire and promote alternative, non- anthropocentric perspectives in educational materials and in everyday teaching. The research is also supported by the scientific expertise of Priv.-Doz. Zsfia Virnyi, PhD, deputy director of the Messerli Research Institute at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna. The study will run for three years and will be completed at the end of 2028. Further information: Universityof Innsbruck Human-Animal Studies: https://www.uibk.ac.at/projects/has