Teachers’ Attitudes Towards History School Textbooks

Abstract

Recent research on globalisation and education policy has indicated that forces of globalisation, standards and accountability have affected the nature, and the value of school textbooks in the Russian Federation and elsewhere. School history textbooks, as instruments in the Russian process of ideological transformation, and nation-building, are currently closely monitored by the State. In other countries, these processes are still present but in less formal and more ad hoc ways. In the Russian Federation, it represents an ideologically driven and state-controlled nation-building process, overseen by the Putin government. Putin was particularly concerned about the negative portrayal of the Soviet past, and he complained that negative assessment of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) was diminishing the important contribution of the Soviet Union in defeating the Nazi Germany. Teachers’ responses demonstrate that there has been a definite ideological shift in the interpretation of historical narratives, and significant events: both in the content of prescribed textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education, and teachers’ attitudes and values towards the core textbooks they use in teaching. Both teachers responses and current government policy on the history national curriculum, where the key aim is to infuse patriotism, and national identity during history lessons, and recent Putin’s push for a single core Russian history textbooks, signal a pronounced exercise in forging a new identity, patriotism, nation-building and a positive re-affirmation of the greatness of the present Russian state. Teachers’ responses also demonstrate that the issue of national identity and balanced representations of the past continue to dominate the debate surrounding the content of history textbooks.