Fostering the Common Good: The Portrayal of the Social Economy in Secondary Business and Economics Textbooks

Abstract

In this research study, we undertook a content analysis of thirteen economics and business textbooks were examined for their coverage of the social economy, which encompasses a range of nonprofit and social enterprise organizations that put “people before profits.” The goal was to understand the ways that these textbooks represent official knowledge of the economy that is passed on to secondary students and how that knowledge is valued and organized in society. The findings show that the social economy is weakly represented in our sample although three did contain some content about the topic. There were two key dimensions to this finding. First, there was little recognition of the social economy as an economic sector. Second, there was fairly consistent coverage of social economy organizations in the textbooks although it lacked depth and little attention was paid to their social purpose. Comparing business and economic textbooks, our analysis showed that the business textbooks had broader overall coverage of the social economy and, significantly, more recognition of it as an economic sector.