An analysis of mathematical modelling in Swedish textbooks in upper secondary school

A new national curriculum has recently been implemented in the Swedish upper secondaryschool where one of the goals to be taught is modelling ability. This paperpresents a content analysis of 14 ”new” mathematical textbooks with the aim to investigatehow the notion of mathematical modelling is presented. An analytic scheme isdeveloped to identify mathematical modelling in the textbooks and to analyse modellingtasks and instructions. Results of the analysis show that there exist a variety ofboth explicit and implicit descriptions, which imply for teachers to be attentive tocomplement the textbooks with other material.