Verenigd in verscheidenheid. Een schoolboekanalyse van de behandeling van de Europese Unie in de onderbouw van het voortgezet onderwijs.
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Young adults should acquire powerful knowledge to be able to follow and participate in debates concerning the European Union (EU). Higher order thinking skills are key to acquire this much needed understanding (this powerful knowledge). This study examines how the EU as a topic is treated in terms of content and cognitive level in geography, economics, and history textbooks in the curricula at lower secondary education level in the Netherlands. These three content courses in the curriculum are responsible for handling the EU according to the national curriculum. A qualitative textbook analysis shows that there is little coordination between these three content courses. On the one hand, this results in an overlap of topics, i.e., curricular surplus. On the other hand, there are content gaps, of which ‘the institutional functioning of the EU’ is the largest. A categorization of textbook tasks about the EU shows that mainly lower order thinking skills are examined. To achieve a more efficient curriculum alignment, it is important to develop a learning track that makes clear what, when and where Dutch students learn about the EU in secondary education. As a result, content gaps can be prevented and space can be created for teaching higher order thinking skills.