‘Confused by multiple deities,ancient Egyptians embraced monotheism’: analysing historical thinking and inclusion in Egyptian history textbooks

Egyptian history textbooks are examined through the prism of historical thinking dimensions and skills, utilizing a critical discourse analysis. The analysis focuses on how the textbooks portray two historically significant events: the advent of Christianity (ca. 33 CE) and Islam (ca. 641 CE) to Egypt. It reveals that the historical narrative presented in the textbooks does two things: first, it essentializes a dominant identity—mainly an Arab Muslim one—eclipsing the multilayered identity informed by the country’s long history. Secondly, the textbooks miss several opportunities to promote historical thinking skills such as ‘cause and consequence’ and ‘change and continuity’. As an entry point to revising the textbooks to include currently missing indigenous minority narratives, a narrative approach that focuses on cultural continuity and change is proposed. The article also calls for further investigation of how these textbooks influence students’ sense of citizenship and historical consciousness, especially that they are increasingly exposed to alternative and competing historical narratives outside the history classroom.     

The representation of colonial discourse in Indonesian secondary education history textbooks during and after the New Order (1975–2013)

This study aimed to analyse the text and context of history textbooks that established Dutch colonialism as a determinant factor in the New Order era and later. Two research questions were postulated: (1) Why was the discourse of colonisation maintained in textbooks after the proclamation of independence in 1945? (2) How was the colonial discourse represented in secondary education history textbooks from the six national curriculum reforms? To answer these questions, this study analysed secondary education history textbooks used during five periods of different national curricula from 1975 to 2013. The analysis was conducted using Teun A. van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The results show that modern professional historians were the producers of the colonial discourse that was reproduced by the textbook writers. These historians established western culture as the ideal model of sociocultural life and constructed Indonesian history as a westernisation process using Dutch colonialism as a determinant factor. Indonesians were narrated into being passive objects.     

Teaching the Nature of Science in Physics Courses: The Contribution of Classroom Historical Inquiries

Physics and chemistry programs at the secondary school level in France recommend introducing components of the history of science (HS). Emphasis is placed on a ‘cultural’ dimension, which is poorly defined but essentially refers to elements of epistemological nature. Moreover, the few examples of activities based on HS suggested by the programs and science textbooks are means to learn scientific content and convey a reductive and false image of the nature of science (NoS). Our main issue is to examine the possibility to communicate a more authentic image of NoS with HS. We begin by demonstrating how our historical and epistemological analysis led us to distinguish different learning goals about NoS. We then show how these goals can generate classroom activities involving collective inquiry based on the implementation of documents. These documents may or may not be paired with experiments. Finally, we discuss the tensions that our choices created with science curricula and among teachers.     

University student perceptions of the relationship between university education and the labour market in Egypt and Oman

How do university students perceive the key relationship between their university education and the labour market? This article describes the perceptions that 827 Egyptian and Omani seniors—both males and females, studying commerce, education, and engineering—hold about that relationship. For these students, a major motivation for attending university is their perception that it will help them get better and more secure employment. They are also confident it will help them enter appropriate careers. However, they are less satisfied with the way in which university curricula prepare them effectively for appropriate careers. In addition, an analysis by nationality, gender, and field of study revealed statistically significant differences among the participants. The Omani students are more confident about their education than the Egyptians—who call for more reform of their curricula to fit labour market requirements. Women are more motivated than men to enter a career after university. The field of study had only a small impact on students’ perceptions of this key relationship.     

Temperature in Science Textbooks: Changes and Trends in Cross-National Perspective (1950–2000)

This study explores the way the concept of temperature was presented in lower-secondary science textbooks in France, Poland and England at the end of the 1950s and in the 2000s. I draw on history of science, history of education and book history to analyze different treatments of an apparently-similar scientific concept with regard to national contexts and diachronic change. Thus I include a presentation of the contexts in which the textbooks I study are published, and I analyse textbooks content revealing different approaches to present the notion of temperature. I argue that these results show that textbooks are valuable sources to investigate public representations of science and their shift over time, and I conclude by stressing the parallel of this evolution with change in everyday relationship with science and scientific instruments.     

Quantitative Analysis of Representations of Nature of Science in Nordic Upper Secondary School Textbooks Using Framework of Analysis Based on Philosophy of Chemistry

The aim of this study was to assess how the different aspects of nature of science (NOS) were represented in Finnish and Swedish upper secondary school chemistry textbooks. The dimensions of NOS were analyzed from five popular chemistry textbook series. The study provides a quantitative method for analysis of representations of NOS in chemistry textbooks informed by domain-specific research on the philosophy of chemistry and chemical education. The selection of sections analyzed was based on the four themes of scientific literacy: knowledge of science, investigate nature of science, science as a way of thinking, and interaction of science, technology and society. For the second round of analysis the theme of science as a way of thinking was chosen for a closer inspection. The units of analysis in this theme were analyzed using seven domain specific dimensions of NOS: tentative, empirical, model-based, inferential, technological products, instrumentation, and social and societal dimensions. Based on the inter-rater agreement, the procedure and frameworks of analysis presented in this study was a reliable way of assessing the emphasis given to the domain specific aspects of NOS. All textbooks have little emphasis on the theme science as a way of thinking on a whole. In line with the differences of curricula, Swedish textbooks emphasize the tentative dimension of NOS more than Finnish textbooks. To provide teachers with a sufficiently wide variety of examples to discuss the different dimensions of NOS changes to the national core curricula are needed. Although changing the emphasis of the curricula would be the most obvious way to affect the emphasis of the textbooks, other efforts such as pre- and in-service courses for developing teachers understanding of NOS and pedagogic approaches for NOS instruction to their classroom practice might also be needed.     

Science,Coloniality, and “the Great Rationality Divide”

This article aims to analyze how science is discursively attached to certain parts of the world and certain “kinds of people,” i.e., how scientific knowledge is culturally connected to the West and to whiteness. In focus is how the power technology of coloniality organizes scientific content in textbooks as well as how science students are met in the classroom. The empirical data consist of Swedish science textbooks. The analysis is guided by three questions: (1) if and how the colonial history of science is described in Swedish textbooks; (2) how history of science is described; (3) how the global South is represented. The analysis focuses on both what is said and what is unsaid, recurrent narratives, and cultural silences. To discuss how coloniality is organizing the idea of science eduation in terms of the science learner, previous studies are considered. The concepts of power/knowledge, epistemic violence, and coloniality are used to analyze how notions of scientific rationality and modernity are deeply entangled with a colonial way of seeing the world. The analysis shows that the colonial legacy of science and technology is not present in the textbooks. More evident is the talk about science as development. I claim that discourses on scientific development block out stories problematizing the violence done in the name of science. Furthermore, drawing on earlier classroom studies, I examine how the power of coloniality organize how students of color are met and taught, e.g., they are seen as in need of moral fostering rather than as scientific literate persons.     

The use and misuse of pleasure in sex education curricula

Since Michelle Fine's writing on the missing discourse of desire in sex education, there has been considerable prompting among sexuality educators and feminist scholars to incorporate talk of pleasure into sex education curricula. While the calls for inclusion continue, few have actually examined the curricula for a pleasure discourse or explored how it is contextualised within sex education curricula. In this paper, we analysed curricula used in the USA in the past decade. A qualitative thematic analysis revealed that the discourse around pleasurable sex was often linked to a range of dangerous or negative outcomes including not using condoms, rushing into sex without thinking, regretted sex, and pregnancy or STDs. When the discourse around pleasure was included in sections on ‘knowing one's body’, this discourse took a medicalised, scientific tone. Pleasurable sex was also presented in more positive ways, either linked to marriage in Abstinence Only Until Marriage curricula, or within a more feminist discourse about female pleasure in comprehensive sex education curricula. Our research indicates that a discourse of desire is not missing, but that this discourse was often situated as part of a discourse on safe practice and there, continues to equate pleasure with danger.     

When Form Follows Fantasy: Lessons for Learning Scientists From Modernist Architecture and Urban Planning

Research in the learning sciences is often motivated by the goal of shaping a better future through design. Architects and urban planners share this goal, and the history of their more ambitious designs provides clear examples of how attempts to build the future can turn out. After discussing similarities and differences between design in the learning sciences and design on the scale of buildings and cities, I examine three visionary projects from the modernist era in architecture and urban planning. Each project sought to bring about a radically different and more desirable future, using the most innovative technology and the best ideas of its time. Lessons for learning scientists are drawn from these projects, and suggestions are offered about how architecture scholars can serve as models for learning scientists in how they conceive and study their own efforts to shape a better future.     

Numbers are Just Not Enough: A Critical Analysis of Race,Gender, and Sexuality in Elementary and Middle School Health Textbooks

Textbooks are a multimillion dollar publishing business in the United States. Even as 21st-century classrooms become more multimodal, digital and hardcopy textbooks remain a key feature of American education. Consequently, classroom textbooks have been shown to control knowledge dissemination across the content areas. In particular, health texts have been uniquely shown to communicate values that validate or marginalize students and encourage healthy or harmful activity. Thus, what textbook makers choose to include as worthy of study, and how they portray various groups of people with regard to race, gender, and sexuality has societal implications. Employing quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods, we analyzed 1,468 images across elementary and middle school health textbooks to examine the portrayal of race, gender, and sexuality. We found that, although gender and racial diversity are well-represented in texts, women and people of color were frequently portrayed in stereotypical roles. For example, girls were depicted daydreaming about heterosexual marriage. Furthermore, this analysis revealed limited representations of sexuality. Findings suggest that focusing on the numerical representation of marginalized groups is not enough to address issues of equity and power in classroom curricula. Instead, we argue, educators must consider the ways in which people are positioned in curricular materials, and ask if portrayals perpetuate or challenge traditional stereotypes.     

Discursive space(s) in science curriculum materials in Canada,Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand

I examine how science curricula are complicit in maintaining the dominance of knowledge production by major powers, particularly the USA, through their efforts to tell the 'truth' about certain topics, and whether resistant counter-discourses are being mounted, especially in 'peripheral' states such as Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. I focus on one set of discourses within school textbooks, namely those about space science. My reading of selected textbooks indicates that students are presented with a limited and sanitized version of space science, with a heavy emphasis on US space-science achievements. Overall, attempts to counter this dominance occur through the inclusion of information about 'local' space-science achievements. Nevertheless, there is very little attempt to criticize, problematize or contextualize space science historically, socially and economically, with the result that the textbooks reproduce the discourses of space science promoted by organizations such as NASA.     

Critical Community-Engaged Scholarship: Communities and Universities Striving for Racial Justice

The goal of this article is to clarify how current dominant understandings of community-engaged scholarship (CES) can be strengthened to incorporate lessons from critical theory and to focus on justice more explicitly. A prior analysis of how CES is defined across multiple disciplinary literatures revealed that scholars define CES as partnerships between universities and communities that collaboratively develop and apply knowledge to address public issues. Six components of CES were frequently recommended for practice within this scholarship as well. However, neither the goal of CES—to support the “public good”—nor the six recommended CES components consistently included an explicit focus on justice and critical theory. By explicitly naming and defining the goal of justice—as opposed to the “public good” —I aim to highlight the importance of conducting routine analyses in CES of whose interests motivate conceptions of the public good and how dominant cultural structures, values, and traditions negatively impact minoritized community members' lives. Thus, this article employs teachings from critical theory—such as race-conscious analyses, asset-based understandings of community, and privileging subaltern experiences—to envision how critical CES could support university and community partnerships in producing knowledge that more effectively dismantles systemic sources of racial and social injustice.     

Technology in Communications—McLuhan Reconsidered

‘When I started school—just a few years ago—neither my teachers nor I knew the term educational media. If we had, it would have meant to us textbooks, a blackboard and some squeaky chalk. Today it embraces the most exotic, complex and seemingly endless array of electronic miracles.     

史观嬗变与清末民初的中学历史课程

历史课程与历史教科书是近代中国社会变迁的产物。随着时代的变换,史观也随之改变,史观的改变带动了教科书观点的更新。从历史课程、历史教科书中,我们能感受不同时代变换风云的政治面孔和史观嬗变带来的影响。     

Textbook Questions in Context-Based and Traditional Chemistry Curricula Analysed from a Content Perspective and a Learning Activities Perspective

In this study, questions in context-based and traditional chemistry textbooks were analysed from two perspectives that are at the heart of chemistry curricula reforms: a content perspective and a learning activities perspective. To analyse these textbook questions, we developed an instrument for each perspective. In total, 971 textbook questions were analysed. Textbook questions in context-based and traditional curricula appeared to differ significantly in their orientation on content and in the activation to engage students in certain learning activities. Although traditional curricula included more questions that stress traditional chemistry content and included more reproductive chemistry questions than context-based curricula, they were not always as traditional as we had expected. Context-based chemistry curricula focused more on chemistry content relating to societal/technological issues and chemistry theory development and also more questions were included that activate students to regulate their own learning. However, context-based chemistry curricula still included a considerable amount of traditional chemistry content and did not focus as much on higher order learning as we had expected. The developed instruments might be helpful in chemistry curricula design to gain insights into the content which is stressed and how students are activated by textbook questions to engage in learning.     

Re-inventing ‘Europe’: the case of the European dimension in Greek-Cypriot geography and history curricula

‘Europe’ has been increasingly ‘invented’ and ‘reinvented’ in discussions about education, curricula and identities over the last five decades. The ‘European dimension in education’ was a term increasingly used by the European Union and the Council of Europe to denote their educational policies encouraging national educational systems to endorse a European dimension in order to prepare young people for an increasingly integrated Europe. However, it has also been a contested term in academic writing, as some researchers critique the elitist, exclusionary and Eurocentric educational implications it may have; others welcome its pedagogic and intercultural potential. This article presents the findings of a content analysis of the history and geography curricula and textbooks used in state Greek-Cypriot primary schools and explores the possibilities of using the European dimension as a tool to alleviate ethnocentrism and traditional pedagogies in these curricula and textbooks, by presenting the application of some principles which have been used for the development of a curricular intervention in the two subjects.     

中国大陆对外汉语初级听力教材的演变与发展

利用“检索系统”和人工搜集,找到建国后截至2006年大陆出版的对外汉语听力教材88本（套）,集中分析了其中具有明显初级标识的14本（套）听力教材,结合前人对于对外汉语教材历史发展的阶段性分析,概括出初级听力教材历史发展的起步阶段、过渡阶段和发展阶段的阶段性特点和代表性教材,并对此类教材的选材和练习类型进行了分析,以期对对外汉语初级听力教材的编写和研究工作提供有价值的信息。     

新时期民俗学者的重新定位

民俗学科的新生性质与新时期对文化建设的高度重视,从某种程度上赋予了民俗学者以特殊的时代责任。近几年来的非物质文化遗产保护工作的陆续开展以及民俗学者在其中的＂学者——传承人＂的双重角色,则更是要求我们对新时期的民俗学者进行一个重新的定位。笔者试图侧重于从民俗学科的理论建设者、非物质文化遗产的宣传者、非物质文化遗产保护指导理论与方法上的智力提供者以及新型的文化传承人这四个方面对新时期民俗学者进行重新定位。     

关于称美国是“melting pot”的不同观点

本文对现行高职高专教材《英语国家概况》中仍称美国是"melting pot"的说法持不同意见。认为这种说法之所以能长期存在,源于现象掩盖了本质。笔者从诸多方面阐述不同的观点,目的是为英语学习者能更加全面地了解美国社会、历史人文,从而为更加准确的进行各种翻译及交际活动奠定基础。     

教科书变革对教学方式影响的质性研究——以新课程义务教育历史教科书为例

对于教科书问题,目前过多的集中在＂教教科书＂与＂用教科书教＂以及教科书理论研究层面,而在真实的课堂教学中关注教科书研究问题却少有问津。课程标准指导下的新教材,其内涵已融入新的理念。基于个案研究分析以了解在真实的历史教学活动中教科书是如何影响教师的教授和学生的学习方式,换一种视角来探讨研究新课程下教科书变革问题比起纯理论说明也许会给我们今后使用或研究教科书更多启示。