Constructing collective memory for (de)colonisation: Taiwanese images in history textbooks, 1950–1987

ABSTRACT

History curriculum and textbooks, as a key mechanism of constructing collective memory, play a critical role in shaping national, social, and cultural imaginations of the young. This paper analyses history textbooks in Taiwan during the martial law period (1950–1987) to explore narratives about Taiwan and examines the ways in which those narratives as collective memory created particular images of Taiwan. The analysis indicates that history textbooks delineated two threads of narrative, one is a Sinicisation narrative, namely Chinese colonisation, and the other is Chinese restoration narrative. The Sinicisation narrative constructed particular collective memory about Taiwan being of Chinese descent and an inheritor of Chinese culture, lost and restored by China after World War II. In the narrative of restoration, Taiwan was imagined as reborn to be the model child of Chinese descent that was obligated to emancipate all Chinese compatriots from Communism and to ultimately realise the goal of Chinese reunification. These narratives served for emancipating Taiwan from Japanese colonisation and constructed particular collective memory that Sinicised Taiwan for Chinese restoration. The image of Taiwan as Chinese descent, identified with Chinese culture, has endured to the present and continue to shape imaginations and discourses about Taiwan in the present.     

Deconstructing neoliberalism in global citizenship discourses: an analysis of Korean social studies textbooks

ABSTRACT

This study explored ways in which official social studies textbooks in South Korea promote global citizenship given the dominant neoliberal ideology in the field of education. Employing soft versus critical global citizenship education (GCE) and critical discourse analysis, this study analyzed 12 middle-school (seventh to ninth grades) social studies textbooks that are mandatory in Korean public schools. The findings of this study demonstrate the prevalence of a neoliberal agenda and nationalist rhetoric in the global citizenship discourses in the textbooks. We discussed the extent to which themes for GCE including globalization, cultural diversity, peace, sustainability, and associated skills and dispositions were instrumental in perpetuating neoliberal economic values and nationalism while marginalizing social justice and multiculturalism in official textbooks.     

论《项链》在中学语文教材中的嬗变

我国于二十世纪二十年代出现了《项链》的中译本,随后《项链》被选入当时的国语文课本。新中国成立后,《项链》在高中语文教材中几经沉浮,解读也呈现出不同的风貌。我们从《项链》进入中国语文教材的历史,可以追溯中国社会意识形态对待外国文学的态度变化轨迹。     

繁芜的汉代小学语文教科书

教科书是学校教育的核心,是教学不可或缺的＂心脏＂。教科书的编写与特定时期的政治、经济、文化特别是教育思想息息相关,攸关着教育的成败。繁芜的汉代小学语文教科书体现在其结构体例以及内容特点上。     

Religious tolerance in secondary Islamic Education textbooks in Kuwait

ABSTRACT

With widespread media coverage of religious ‘extremism’, there is a great deal of interest in how religious identities and principles of tolerance – or intolerance – are learned and manifested. The current study investigates the extent to which high school Islamic Education textbooks reflect Islamic religious tolerance, and how this topic presented. A content analysis for religious-tolerance topics was conducted in the Islamic Education textbooks in Kuwaiti high schools; the results show that tolerance is mentioned much more often than intolerance, but there is still room for improvement.     

Discursive construction of Pakistan's national identity through curriculum textbook discourses in a Pakistani school in Dubai,the United Arab Emirates

This study investigates Pakistan's secondary school children's constructions of their national identity in a Pakistani school in Dubai by drawing on data collected from students and teachers from the case school and analysing national curriculum textbooks used in the school. Informed by Foucault's concepts, the article problematises how the curriculum textbooks are employed as a technology of power for inculcating national consciousness in the students. The findings suggest that Pakistan's national curriculum textbooks deploy a specific version of Islam as a major technology, which then influences other national identity signifiers in the textbooks for shaping students' national identity. The school affords a crucial space for the complex interplay of these technologies, which construct students' ethnocentric national identities, encouraging social polarisation. This has implications for Pakistan's national social cohesion as well as the potential for subverting international peaceful coexistence and working relationships, particularly in the selected overseas study context.     

The religious world in Chinese social studies textbooks

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to explore the representation and interpretation of the religious world in Chinese social studies textbooks. The data cover six major subjects at both primary and secondary levels. The findings indicate that although the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China mandates a separation of religion and education, Chinese textbooks introduce students to a variety of religious traditions. These traditions are either presented as independent learning units or integrated with textbook content across subjects. Three discursive frames are used to categorise the information selected to represent religion and its interpretation in the discourse of Chinese curriculum texts: a de-mystification frame (deconstructing the mystery of religion and presenting a secular understanding of the religious world); a de-modernisation frame (representing religion as associated with pre-modernity); and a science/humanities frame (comprising two lenses for interpreting religion). The findings of the study suggest that although the framing of religion in China’s social studies curriculum reflects the state’s secularisation agenda, it also leaves space for further exploration of the meaning of religion.     

新编普通高中思想政治教材的理念与特点

2019年秋季学期开始使用的新的统编高中思想政治教材旨在培育堪当民族复兴大任的时代新人。党的十八大以来中央历次全会决定和习近平同志的系列重要讲话精神,特别是党的十九大精神和习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想,是最重要的编写依据。教师应充分理解新教材的主要内容和特点,充分认识使用新教材的重要意义,加强学习和培训,发挥好思想政治课在立德树人根本任务中的关键作用。     

Analogies in chemistry textbooks

Abstract

This study combines a critical analysis of analogies found in eight chemistry textbooks used by Australian senior high school students with the views of the textbook authors about analogies in chemistry textbooks and teaching. Sixty‐two analogies were identified which described abstract chemical concepts such as atomic structure and collision theory. A range of styles, including pictorial analogies, were identified and the analogies were found to have variant amounts of analogical mapping and analogue explanation. Analogical limitations were rarely identified. Authors contended that they were cautious about including analogies in textbooks as analogies require a flexibility not available when they are set in print. It was argued that analogy was best applied as a strategy for teachers in response to them perceiving that students had misunderstood an original explanation.     

回顾·总结·展望——人民教育出版社五十年小学语文教材编写历程

自新中国成立到2000年,人民教育出版社编写了九套小学语文教材。即根据老解放区国语课本修订的全国通用小学语文课本;五年一贯制小学语文课本;根据1956年小学语文教学大纲编写的初小、高小语文课本;20世纪60年代初编写的全日制十年制小学语文课本;根据1963年小学语文教学大纲编写的全日制十二年制小学语文课本;在1978年教学大纲精神指导下编写的全日制十年制学校小学语文课本;20世纪80年代初在上一套课本基础上编写的五年制和六年制小学语文课本;1986年义务教育法颁布后,根据义务教育小学语文教学大纲编写的小学语文教科书实验本、试用本;20世纪90年代末编写的义务教育小学语文教科书试用修订本。     

浅议近代中华书局《修身》系列教科书

中华书局在近代中国教科书的编写与出版中占有重要的地位,深入分析其不同类型教科书,有利于探索其对近代中国教育思想的传播和发展所发挥的作用,《修身》系列教科书的研究就是一种尝试。     

试论小学语文教材编写的理念和设计

新课程改革需要有体现先进理念和科学设计的教材作为操作平台。该文以中华书局出版的《小学语文》为例,分析了小学语文教材编写的五个基本理念,并阐述了小学语文教材编写的设计思路,这为小学语文教材建设和发展提供了新的启迪。     

Self-abandonment or seeking an alternative way out: understanding Chinese rural migrant children’s resistance to schooling

Abstract

This study explores the complexity of school resistance by Chinese rural migrant children (RMC), which may contribute to their educational failure, as well as the school conditions informing their resistance. This study categorizes migrant children’s school resistance into three patterns, based on their rationale for school behaviors: conformist learner, education abandoner, and nascent transformative resister. All three groups were initially believers in pursuing academic success for upward social mobility, as promoted at school. However, some gradually determined such educational pursuit was untenable and became education abandoners. Teachers’ predicting RMC’s academic failure and highlighting the individual’s responsibility for that failure contributed to that abandonment. While findings of this study indicate that migrant children may develop transformative resistance, this possibility is challenged by the dominant ideology of meritocracy and a teaching agenda that legitimizes social inequality.     

Evolution in secondary school biology textbooks of the PRC,the USA,and the latter stages of the USSR

The presentations of evolutionary theory in 13 prominent, secondary-school biology textbooks—3 Chinese, 8 American, and 2 Soviet—were examined using the methods of content analysis. For each book, the amount of text devoted to each of 80 evolutionary topics was assessed. Such word counts were enumerated not only for the main narrative, but also for eight supplemental components (illustrations, marginal information, appendixes, etc.). Pronounced differences in topic emphasis among the 13 textbooks and systematic trends between countries are discussed. The strong emphasis on evolution in the USSR textbooks is impressive, but these textbooks also neglect some major themes, and they devote considerable text to certain concepts of an erroneous or dubious nature. The PRC (People's Republic of China) textbooks fail to introduce a considerable number of topics that are prominent in the other two systems. The eight USA textbooks exhibit great diversity in terms of total evolutionary content, number of themes treated, and which topics are emphasized. Unlike the USSR and PRC textbooks, the USA books position a vast amount of evolutionary content (26.5%-55.8%) within components outside the main narrative. The evolutionary text of USA editions is dispersed throughout and is presented surprisingly early. Several individual themes that proved particularly revealing are examined, including human evolution, law of recapitulation, evolution and religion, evidences of evolution, punctuated equilibria, and artificial selection.     

Textbook representations of science-technology relationships

One way of viewing curriculum content is to regard it astext: i.e. as a collection of narrative and argument which helps shape learners' views of the world. School and university textbooks form part of that collection. At university level, texts encountered by future teachers help shape views of the discipline which may be transmitted to later generations of school learners. This paper is concerned with how the relationships between science and technology are portrayed in school and university textbooks. Criteria are offered for evaluating these portrayals, and examples are presented of material which meets (or fails to meet) these criteria. Specializations: science and technology education; educational measurement and evaluation.     

Professional and personal values and virtues in education and teaching

This article seeks to shed light on the dilemma facing history education in regions beset by a protracted, and as yet unresolved ethno-political conflict. The article will examine this issue by means of a unique test case that observes a dramatic war event in Israeli textbooks. The event in question is the Six-Day War of 1967 and the study of its outcomes. This war stands in the twilight between memory and history and there is an extreme gap between the public history and the formal representation of that war in school textbooks. The question that begs an answer is why such a seminal event in Israeli history is not presented in history textbooks like the country’s other wars. The research methodology, which was conducted on two generations of textbooks, is based upon a comparative discourse analysis. A discussion of the findings contends that a critical pedagogy approach to history education might equip adolescent students with more powerful lenses through which to view several plausible scenarios for healing the wounds of the present by means of a rational and grounded perception of the past.     

A study of the presence of evolutionary protoconcepts in pre-high school textbooks

Abstract Elementary and middle school science texts were analyzed for the presence of evolutionary protoconcepts, which are defined as topics that prepare students to study evolution in later years. Elementary and middle school texts were content-analyzed for protoconcepts in both life science and earth science. Seventeen concepts considered important for student understanding of evolution were gleaned from the misconception literature and used to review the life science texts. Concepts used to analyze other texts were chosen by exploring all texts used in the analysis for any topics that might qualify as evolutionary protoconcepts, thus generating grounded theory. Coverage of evolutionary protoconcepts varies considerably among published textbooks. We recommend using this analysis when considering textbooks for adoption and for supplementing texts currently in use. We also recommended this type of analysis of textbooks for inclusion of other topics of interest to science education research.     

Interpretations of Parenting by Mainland Chinese and U.S. American Children

Objective. This study examined whether mainland Chinese and U.S. American children’s interpretations of their parents’ coercive authority assertion and critical comparison and shaming moderate relations between their reports of parenting and adjustment. Design. Middle-school children from mainland China (n = 217) and the United States (n = 207) rated their parents on coercive authority assertion and critical comparison and shaming, indicated whether they approved of their parents’ practices, rated their parents’ underlying intentions, and reported their own depression, antisocial behavior, and school motivation. Results. Moderation analyses showed that associations between coercive authority assertion or critical comparison and shaming and child depression were stronger for American and Chinese children whose approval ratings for these practices were relatively low. Greater coercive authority assertion was related to lower antisocial behavior for children who rated their parents high for the child beneficial interpretation and to lower school motivation for children who rated their parents low for the parent beneficial interpretation. For American children, greater coercive authority assertion also was related to greater depression for those who rated their parents relatively low for the child beneficial interpretation. For Chinese children, greater critical comparison and shaming was related to increased school motivation for those who rated their parents high on the child beneficial and/or parent beneficial interpretations. Conclusions. When children interpret their parents’ behavior in a more positive manner (i.e., they approve or think it is motivated by concern for the child), negative effects of coercive authority assertion and critical comparison and shaming may be mitigated. However, some cultural differences were found, particularly with respect to school motivation.     

中、新教科书价值取向的比较研究——以中国苏教版小学语文教科书和新加坡EPB版小学华文教科书为例

语文教科书不仅在传授学生语文基本知识、培养语言能力、训练思辨和表达能力等方面起着重要的作用,而且其蕴涵的价值取向对学生思想意识的形成也有很大影响.本文以中国苏教版小学语文和新加坡小学华文教科书为例,从两套教科书中的主题分析入手,对隐藏在文章中的价值取向进行分析,希望对我国的教材建设有一定的促进作用.     

Understanding the influence of two mathematics textbooks on prospective secondary teachers’ knowledge

This study examines the influence of reading and planning from two differently organized mathematics textbooks on prospective high school mathematics teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and content knowledge of exponential functions. The teachers completed a pretest and two posttests. On the pretest, the teachers possessed an incomplete understanding of content and pedagogical content knowledge related to exponential functions. The teachers’ understanding of how to translate from table to closed-form and recursive equations grew as a result of their use of the Mathematics: Modeling Our World textbook, while the Discovering Algebra textbook appeared to be more beneficial in terms of pedagogical content knowledge. Teachers read from the student lessons in both textbooks, but read differently from the sections of both textbooks intended for the teacher. They focused more on the purpose of the Mathematics: Modeling Our World lesson and more on the places where students might experience difficulties in the margins of the Discovering Algebra lesson. The teachers’ learning was influenced by their own personal characteristics (e.g., previous textbook experiences) as well as textbook qualities (e.g., organization).