National identity and its relationship with teachers' historical knowledge and pedagogy: the case of Taiwan

National identity is one of the most important forms of ideology that affects human behaviours. Yet, the issue of whether it influences history teachers' subject matter knowledge or teaching practice is overlooked most of the time. With regime change in Taiwan, history curriculum and textbooks are no longer dominated by a China-centred narrative; more Taiwanese history is included in the curriculum. Given the fact that the Taiwanese are split on the issue of national identity, it is important to understand if and how teachers vary in their historical knowledge and instruction. This study examines the issue by investigating the relationships between Taiwanese junior high school history teachers' national identities, their subject matter knowledge and teaching practices. The result indicates that teachers' national identities significantly relate to their historical knowledge and conceptions about history, but bear no relationship to their teaching approaches. Pro-independence teachers have significantly more knowledge in both Taiwanese and Chinese histories and have better conceptions about the nature of history, but they do not necessarily choose to provide students multiple perspectives and interpretations. The implications for democratic citizenship education and teacher education are discussed.     

Rethinking Taiwanese nationality and subjectivity: implications from language issues in colonial Taiwan in the 1920s

This historical study reflects on history curriculum debates over the last 20 years in Taiwan. To open up possibilities for contemporary Taiwanese to rethink themselves in terms of national culture and subjectivity, this paper explores the construction of Taiwanese subjectivity in the past. It focuses on the history of Taiwan under Japanese occupation as a key issue in history curriculum debates. Particularly, it examines language issues in the 1920s, an important theme in the histories of the formation of Taiwanese consciousness, ideology, and cultural nationalism during the Japanese colonial period. Rather than addressing issues of identity (national or cultural), identifying who Taiwanese really were, or looking for Chinese or Taiwanese consciousness, this study explores how meanings of “Taiwanese” in the 1920s under Japanese occupation were constructed in the discourse of language reform for civilisation. The analysis of the New Culture Movement discourse suggests that the classical Chinese language of Hànwén as a valuable cultural resource and flexible linguistic instrument played an essential role in constituting Taiwanese subjectivities that shaped Taiwanese practices of the self for distinctive civilisation.     

Political ideology and Taiwanese school curricula

Taiwanese textbooks play a central role in Taiwanese education. In the wake of the political reform and social protest movements of the 1970s and 1980s that prompted Taiwanese educational reform, critics have charged that traditional curricula tend to reinforce the dominant national Chinese cultural identity. The purpose of this article is to review recent research on the complex ideological processes in Taiwan’s school curriculum. The article begins with an overview of the political and social impact on social studies curricula in Taiwan from 1949 to the present, followed by a theoretical discussion of the interrelationship between school curriculum and political ideology using an analysis of Taiwanese textbooks as evidence. The article then suggests a number of classroom practices and methodologies for elementary and secondary school teachers in social studies classes.     

Ambiguity as deliberate strategy: the ‘de-politicized’ discourse of national identity in the Taiwanese citizenship curriculum

This article aims to investigate how the discourse on national identity is approached in the new Taiwanese citizenship curriculum. The differing opinions on Taiwan’s relationship with China and the constant threat from this rising superpower have deterred the explicit promotion of either a Taiwanese or Chinese identity. The new curriculum follows a strategy of ‘intentional ambiguity’, where neither identity is mentioned. In this ‘polysemous’ form, the curriculum has been criticized for staying silent on the question of cultivating a national identity. However, the curriculum developers interviewed for this paper suggested that parents and pupils who examine the new curriculum can find support for whichever national identity they favor since it is designed in such an inclusive manner. They can then simultaneously reflect on the multiple, divergent or competing meanings behind the ‘polysemous texts’ and this ‘hermeneutic’ process of reasoning can then facilitate the choice of national identity with maximum acceptance.     

Fashioning curriculum reform as identity politics—Taiwan's dilemma of curriculum reform in new millennium

This paper explores indigenization and globalization, the double issue of curriculum and identity as a dialectical contradiction that characterizes the ambivalence of “Taiwanese identity.” “Taiwanese identity” is treated as a social, political, and cultural construct rather than a fixed term in an essentialist sense. Curriculum, as culture's medium of social identity construction, represents a struggle over who constructs whose identity and what is constructed. Therefore, when curriculum reform is called for, it is also a time when a society transitioning and redrawing its socio-political and cultural boundaries to resolve internal social conflicts and identity anxiety. Curriculum reform, in this paper, is analyzed not only as a question of shifting explicit ideas of educational practice but also a question of shifting configurations in power relations that signify a politics of identity.The historical context that brought about the question of identity in Taiwan is introduced first. The second section discusses how emerging curricula were politically, socially, and culturally implicated in the process of constructing a Taiwan-centric identity. The third section analyzes the political, social, cultural, and educational implications of new curricula on the formation of a Taiwan-centric identity. Finally, the paper discusses the effect of globalization on the practice of new curricula and points out an ambivalence of local–global identity construction and the conflicting roles of education, especially curriculum, in this ambivalence.     

Political Ideology and Social Studies Curricula in Taiwan

Taiwanese textbooks play a central role in Taiwanese education. Teachers rely on the textbooks to develop lessons as well as the majority of the content of their classes. The purpose of this article is to explore the historical development of the political and ideological complexities in Taiwan's social studies curriculum. The article begins with an overview of Taiwan's history and population, followed by a discussion of the political and social impacts on Taiwan's social studies curriculum and textbooks from 1949 to the present. The theoretical interrelation between legitimised knowledge and school curriculum is discussed in relation to these issues.     

Conclusion: deformed relationships—identity politics and history education in East Asia

The previous chapters in this special issue have analysed different aspects of the politics of history curriculum development in East Asia. This final chapter draws together some of the themes that emerge from these analyses. The first of these is the salience, in history curricula throughout the region, of primordialist conceptions of ethno-cultural and historical identity. The second, related to this, is the predominance among political elites of conceptions of history that emphasise the ‘correctness’ of received interpretations, rather than the critical process of historical analysis. The political constraints on curriculum developers mean that despite the recent interest shown across East Asia in more ‘skills-based’ approaches to teaching history, the prospects for implementing a pedagogy that truly encourages a critical approach to the past are likely to remain poor.     

The Scottish school history curriculum and issues of national identity

ABSTRACT

The Scottish curriculum operates through broad guidelines that allow a good deal of freedom to shape the curriculum. This article reports the findings of an investigation into the attitudes towards, and knowledge of Scottish history of 16‐year‐old pupils in Scottish schools. The pupils’ responses to questions about aspects of Scotland's past revealed a very large degree of ignorance about important people, events, circumstances and dates as well as a number of misconceptions about major historical aspects. The content of the school history curriculum has an important part to play in the development of a sense of national identity. The findings are discussed at a time when there is a resurgent sense of national identity, with the people in Scotland recently voting in a referendum for the setting up of a Scottish parliament. The minimal place history occupies in the curriculum may partly explain the lack of pupils’ knowledge. There is a lack of detailed evidence on this issue, both within Scotland and from other nations. A major debate about what matters in Scotland's past is needed, for Scotland has avoided establishing a prescribed history curriculum: a well‐informed teaching profession has to make critical decisions about what to include.     

The reformulation of national identity in the new Taiwanese citizenship curriculum through the lens of curriculum reformers

The national curriculum reformers, regarded as members of the social elites and intellectuals, projected their vision of identity onto the curriculum which they constructed and influenced the next generation’s national consciousness. In the tangled relationship between politics and education, the selection of the reformers in a sense dictates the direction of the new curriculum. This article interviewed 18 reformers, members of the latest citizenship curriculum of 2010, to investigate their individual views on identities and the monolithically-promoted Chinese configuration in the old curriculum. Although the new citizenship curriculum, renamed Curriculum Guidelines for Civics and Society, puts nothing in writing in favour of either a Chinese or Taiwanese national identity, according to the discovery in this research, the Curriculum Committee implicitly embedded a transformed inclusive and hyphenated Taiwanese national identity in the new curriculum in the hope of accentuating Taiwan’s exclusive sovereignty. The inner thinking of the reformers is uncovered to reveal their reasoning that a broadly constructed national identity can concurrently accommodate diverse personal identities and suits the society better than the previously prescribed Chinese identity. This article also records the evolution of the curriculum from the previous China-centred narratives to Taiwan-centred narratives, something that happened in line with the changes in Taiwanese society.     

对高一历史教学要解决初高中衔接问题的探究

在新课程改革的背景下,由于初高中历史课程体系的差异,导致教学衔接问题日益凸现.因此如何解决初高中历史课程的衔接问题,一直是令高一历史老师比较头疼的工作.基于此,以岳麓版必修(I)政治文明历程中的某些课和北师大版初中历史教材为例进行对比分析,从知识衔接、强化课程目标、改变教师的教学策略、学生的学习方法等方面阐述解决初高中...     

Book reviews

Background: In England, the promotion of ‘national values’ within the history curriculum has become an increasingly topical issue in the wake of recent debates about ‘Britishness’ and community cohesion. However, despite the swathe of policy statements and pronouncements, there is little empirical evidence linking young people's identities and their attitudes towards history.

Purpose: Drawing on a survey of undergraduates, we explore young people's attitudes towards the history curriculum and how these relate to their ethnic, national and political identity. We anticipated that students ascribing to a strong sense of national identity may be particularly receptive to a traditional approach to teaching national values within history classes, while those with a strong sense of political identity would be receptive to a multicultural approach; and vice versa.

Sample: The sample consisted of 353 undergraduates attending five universities in the North of England. The sample was composed of British citizens, the majority of whom would have recently experienced secondary education including discrete or cross-curricular teaching designed to promote ‘British’ national values.

Design and methods: Students' attitudes towards history and their self-identity were estimated using a questionnaire survey asking respondents a series of questions about history teaching and identity. Exploratory factor analysis was used to reveal underlying patterns in students' responses to items assessing their attitudes towards history. Items gauging relevant dimensions of self-identification, such as the relative importance of their national identity, along with other individual background characteristics, were then regressed on to attitudes towards history.

Results: We found that students' attitudes towards history were connected with two distinct factors: traditional/conservative and multicultural/liberal. The regression results revealed a positive relationship between a strong sense of national identity and a traditional attitude towards history, and, a negative relationship between a strong sense of national identity and a multicultural attitude towards history, even when controlling for students' background characteristics.

Conclusions: Our exploratory research suggests that students' self-identity is likely to influence their attitudes towards approaches to history teaching. Educational policy-makers and practitioners must therefore pay careful attention to students' self-identity and the context in which this is formed when seeking to inculcate an inclusive national identity in history classes.     

课程改革中教师专业身份的危机与重构

课程改革中,教师的专业身份往往面临挑战,它也是教师面对压力的一个重要原因。本文提出关注教师在课程改革中专业身份的重新建构,并以质的研究方法,指出教师寻求专业身份的过程充满了挣扎与无力感,因此要给教师以适切的支持与尊重,使他们获得专业身份的赋权,从而实现真正意义上的教师专业发展。     

Language Policy and Group Identification in Taiwan

Taiwan is a multicultural and multilingual society. Generally speaking, Taiwanese residents fall into one of four ethnic groups. Each ethnic group has a different cultural context and a preferred language. Therefore, one's use of language may reveal his/her identification with an ethnic group, and language policy implementation may imply the power of a certain subculture. Owing to this condition, there have been controversies related to language policy in Taiwanese history. Taiwan has been governed by several regimes, and each regime implemented different language policies. These policies reflected the changes in group identification of Taiwanese people, and also indicated how the government rulers use language policy as a means to shape people's national identity. Even today, several language policy controversies, which imply the conflicts between different ethnic groups in Taiwan, still remain unresolved. In summary, Taiwan can be used as an example to illustrate the relationship between language and identity.     

Nationalistic Education in a Post-colonial Age: the Impact of Study Trips to China and the Development of Hong Kong Students' National Identity

With the return of its sovereignty to the People's Republic of China (PRC) on 1 July 1997, Hong Kong attained a new political status as a Special Administrative Region. Hong Kong students, under British rule, had long been receiving de-politicised education, and a sense of belonging to China was limited to the cognitive domain of Chinese history. The ideal of promoting national identity, underpinned in the current civic education curriculum, is proving to be a difficult task. While much literature has documented how curriculumbased educational practices fail to instil students with such an identity, little study has been undertaken to suggest effective alternatives and to examine how they work. This paper reports a study investigating the impact of study trips on developing students' national identity. Through observation and interviews, it takes an in-depth look into students' experience, into how they identify with a Chinese identity. Results indicate that though the study trips help to nurture the cognitive and affective dimensions of national identity, there are limits and possibilities involved. This paper concludes with reminders which teachers should have taken into account when thinking of using co-curricular activities to address the legitimate need of fostering nationalistic education.     

The battle hymn of the activist teacher: Taiwanese school teachers’ resistance to curriculum changes

ABSTRACT

This article challenges the simplistic and reductive image of Taiwanese schoolteachers, and reveals their actions of resistance during the turmoil of the recent curriculum reform controversy. Despite the fact that teachers are not usually portrayed as progressive and revolutionary agents, in the face of the disputed curriculum revision in 2014, some Taiwanese teachers came forward to oppose its implementation through demonstrations, hunger strikes, and litigation. The wider public's attention to this issue and ensuing student movement can be attributed to these teachers’ pioneering activism. By means of interviewing 12 teachers, this article explores activist teachers’ political self-efficacy, the creation of their pressure groups, and their apprehension about fighting against the authorities. The recording of this teacher-initiated social movement demonstrates ‘teachers as activists’, and hopefully will inspire educators not to limit their influence solely to the classroom.     

增强“中国近现代史纲要”课教学实效性的探索与思考

＂中国近现代史纲要＂（以下称＂纲要＂）是中宣部、教育部＂05新课程实施方案＂中的重要组成部分,自2007年以来已在全国绝大多数高校开设。本门课是一种具有价值倾向的思想政治理论课,它主要从历史教育的角度承担着对大学生进行思想政治教育的功能。＂纲要＂课教学如何把握好价值导向,增强实效性,实现教材体系向教学体系的转化,是现存的引人关注的问题,本文对此进行探讨。     

政治认同感与我国国民幸福感研究

我国的文明历史源远流长,中华民族的文化也从早期单一的宗族文化发展成为今天文化艺术上的“百花齐放”。在世界文化蓬勃发展的今天,不同文化不再以独立的形式存在而是更加紧密交织在一起。而认同感是在特定的条件下产生的特定的个体心理趋同,文章主要探究在新时期的文化交织的过程中,政治认同感对我国国民幸福感的影响。     

American Indian and Taiwan Aboriginal education: Indigenous identity and career aspirations

This article investigates the interactions between identity and career aspirations among Taiwanese Aborigines and American Indians. While many similarities exist between the two indigenous groups, several differences remain as well. In comparing the identity issue between these two groups, this study shows that American Indians generally live in a more multicultural society than Taiwanese Aborigines. American Indian students do not experience the same degree of stereotype or racial discrimination from their teachers and peers as experienced by Taiwanese Aborigines. However, affirmative action policies are more favorable in Taiwan than they are in the United States. Drawing from a critical standpoint theory, we argue that families, tribes, and communities should play a more prominent role in the education of indigenous peoples.     

History,identity, and the school curriculum in Northern Ireland: an empirical study of secondary students' ideas and perspectives

This study reports results of an empirical investigation of secondary students' conceptions of history and identity in Northern Ireland. Interviews with 253 students from a variety of backgrounds indicate that they initially identify with a wide range of historical themes, but that these identifications narrow as they study the required national curriculum during the first 3 years of secondary school. Often, they draw selectively from the formal curriculum in order to support their developing identification with the history of their own political/religious communities. This process is most apparent among boys, at predominantly Protestant schools, and in schools located in areas of conflict. These findings suggest that to address history's role in ongoing community conflict, educators may need to challenge more directly the beliefs and assumptions held by students of varied backgrounds, as well as to provide a clearer alternative to the partisan histories encountered elsewhere.     

The History We Need: Strategies of Citizen Formation in the Danish History Curriculum

Teaching history in schools can be a significant policy instrument for shaping the identities of future citizens. The Danish curriculum for teaching history of 2009 aims at strengthening a sense of “Danishness” which calls for theoretical analysis. Focusing on this particular case, the paper develops a political theoretical frame for evaluating such strategies. While David Miller sees promoting a national identity to be a legitimate strategy of citizen formation in a liberal democracy, this view has been challenged by, among others, Arash Abizadeh. Miller could answer Abizadeh's challenges if the debate is viewed in a pedagogical context where children are in the process of citizen formation. Their debate offers central elements to the evaluative frame; the final developed frame includes cooperative practices.