Textbook Narratives Research Articles

Historia Ukrainy w najnowszych rosyjskich podręcznikach do historii w świetle rosyjskich rozważań nad narodem

The article is devoted to the vision of Ukrainian history presented in the latest Russian secondary school history textbook published by Proswieshchenie. It also contains the analysis of selected events from the common Russian-Ukrainian history present in discourses concerning the concepts of the nation and the synthesis of Russian history. The textbook narrative is dominated by the myth of a brotherly nation and the imperialist vision of the history of the Russian state. According to the textbook narrative, Ukraine has subjectivity, although it is consistently diminished by the solution of the civilization approach.

Louis de Broglie's wave-particle duality: from textbooks’ blackboxes to a chain of reference presentation

Abstract We discuss the proposition of wave-particle duality made by Louis de Broglie in the period of 1922-1924 as well as the narratives of undergraduate Physics textbooks that introduce this topic. After a brief discussion on the nature of scientific reality, we point out the main theories, assumptions and techniques adopted by de Broglie to achieve the relation between momentum and wavelength. We use these elements as analytical categories, observing which of them are still present in four popular undergraduate introductory textbooks. Our results show that none of the textbooks used de Broglie's original strategy (mathematical derivation), treating his ideas as postulates. Moreover, we show that only few elements of de Broglie's original presentation are still commented by textbooks, which treat de Broglie's ideas as purely speculative, reinforcing the “genius myth”. In the sequence, we propose a didactic alternative, which we call a “chain of reference presentation”. In this strategy, we highlight that all scientific knowledge is supported by previous theories and it works as the ground of future scientific improvements. With this perspective, we perform a didactic derivation of de Broglie's momentum-wavelength relation (based on the original papers and on the specialized literature) and we introduce empirical and theoretical works that may be studied from it.

Kolonisatör eller turist? Frågor och arbetsuppgifter i svenska historieläromedel under en tid av kunskapsideologisk förhandling

Coloniser or Tourist?: Questions and Exercises in Swedish History Textbooks, 1927–2015. The history of History as a Swedish school subject has usually been based on two sources: curriculum plans and textbook narratives. Drawing upon more than 900 exercises that occur in 72 history textbooks published 1927–2015, this article primarily examines which different approaches to history that have been prearranged to the pupils during the second half of the last century. It is shown that a great majority of the exercises, throughout the whole period of time, prescribes a simple reproduction of unchallenged truths. It is also argued that both disciplinarian assignments and aesthetic tasks, seem to appear at least as often before, as after, the 1970s. Subsequently, especially in the 1990s, the exercises occasionally ask for the individual student’s own opinions - without demanding them to consider any historical circumstances. Accordingly it is argued that while the former category of exercises most often enjoin the distanced view of the uninvolved tourist, the latter rather instructs the pupil to embrace the coloniser’s self-centred perspective of the past.

A Guerra da Tríplice Aliança como conhecimento escolar no Paraguai: Narrativas históricas centradas em personagens (1897-2009)

The present research defines didactic works of History conceived and adopted inschools of basic education in Paraguay, as a documental corpus for this study. Twelve didacticParaguayan books of History were analyzed with the purpose of observing the translationof the War of the Triple Alliance into the school knowledge environment, specificallyabout historical narratives centered on characters. The selected works cover a timeline, whichinitial mark is at the end of the conflict. It is thus, from the second half of the nineteenthcentury until the year 2009. It was assumed that in Paraguay, the War of the Triple Allianceevent, marked the collective memory of that country, and had / still has an important roleon national identities development. Regarding the narratives of Paraguayan textbooks, itwas predominant in most of the, a descriptive perspective based on military campaignsand individual actions of army commanders, and they were non-rare associated with actsof heroism. It is important to mention that in Paraguay, during the whole XX Century,the political and historical discussions practically led to the dichotomization between theones who were in favor of Solano Lopez and the ones who were against him (“lopists” and“non-lopists”), which were eventually transposed to the school books of that country.

The construction and deconstruction of national myths. A study of the transformation of Finnish history textbook narratives after World War II

ABSTRACTHistorical myths were essential tools of nation-building in nineteenth century Europe, including Finland. ‘Myths’ are vernacularly and trans-generationally fostered narratives of the past. A myth is born, when a community embraces a narrative as an integral element of its collective memory. In the Finnish case of nation-building, the core of collective memory consisted of the myths of a primordial ethnic home, the destiny of a nation-state, resilient people, a free peasantry and military valour. The longevity of myths is challenged by changes in politics and historiography. In Europe, the deconstruction of national myths took place after the Second World War, when nationalism lost its relevance to the communities and historians urged an objective and multiperspective approach to the past. De-ideologization and multiperspectivity were equally expected from school textbooks. The article ends up questioning the feasibility of the nation-state as the framework of presenting history.

Unworthy of History? On the Absence and Stereotypical Images of Women Scientists in Light of the Historical Narrative in Middle and Secondary School Textbooks

Our research project “Unworthy of History” focuses on discussing the historical narrative in Polishhistory textbooks that are used in teaching history at the middle school level. The aim is to analyze and describe ways of thinking about as well as presenting the role and place of women and men in history in schools. Research shows that women are portrayed in textbooks as playing a less important role than men – they are almost non-existent in public life. “(...) what is male is universal. What is female is accidental and secondary”. The few women that are mentioned in these textbooks are portrayed in traditional roles, usually family roles, and in those contexts and spheres of life that are culturally considered to be typically feminine. Women are not only under-represented in history textbooks; also, informationabout them is often distorted or simply untrue. The topic of the (in)equality between women and men as well as the history of women’s emancipation movements, which are related to the empowerment of half of humanity, is not considered worthy to be presented in Polish textbooks. Our presentation and study focused on the absence and stereotypical representations of women scientists in Polish history textbooks. The results reveal that although women could be as creative and hard working as men – not exclusively in the fields traditionally associated with women (e.g. Josephine Cochran invented the dishwasher in 1872, and Marion Donovan – disposable diapers in 1950) butalso in those associated with men (e.g. Mary Anderson created windshield wipers in 1903 and Grace Murray found the first computer bug in 1947) – their contribution to the development of societies is marginalised, trivialised or totally omitted by the authors Polish history textbooks. In every textbook analysed, men make up over 90% of characters introduced by name although they were not necessarily widely known. On the other hand, women who achieved professional success in science, art or social development get ignored.

Bridging Past and Present Traumas: The Emergence of Kosovo Serb Ethnoscape in the Dynamic Interaction between the Enclaved Environment and History Textbooks’ Content

AbstractThis article deals with the use of history textbooks imported from Serbia in the specific context of Kosovo Serb enclavement. It provides a content analysis of history textbooks used by Kosovo Serb pupils in Kosovo in terms of their contribution to Kosovo Serb collective identity building. This article focuses on the interaction between the enclaved environment within which Kosovo Serbs have lived since 1999 and the narratives contained in the history textbooks, to highlight how this interaction influences the way Kosovo Serbs consider their identity. First, I start by showing that history textbooks used by Kosovo Serbs in Kosovo emphasize religious identity. Next, I argue that dialogic relation between past and present, understood through the dynamic interaction between the enclaved environment and history textbook narratives, contributes to the emergence of enclaves as ethnoscapes.

Racialized narratives in Dutch history textbooks: a critical race examination

El presente artículo es un análisis cualitativo de las narrativas racializadas en los libros de texto holandeses (1968-2017), ilustrado por ocho representaciones de personas negras seleccionadas de una muestra de 200 libros de texto holandeses de educación secundaria. Puesto que las imágenes son indicadores de racialización, la autora se centra en las narrativas visuales. El artículo concluye que la racialización se despliega a través de dos tipos de estructuras narrativas: a) la racialización a través de la alteridad usando identidades estereotípicas unilaterales y jerarquía racial y b) la racialización a través de la semejanza mantenida a través de marcos ciegos al color, narrativas racializadas y minimización de la referencia a las razas. El artículo además reflexiona sobre el uso de la teoría crítica de la raza (CRT) como marco y el uso de la metodología crítica de la raza (CRM) en combinación con métodos discursivos para el análisis visual y de los libros de texto. Insertando narrativas contrarias, este artículo ilustra que el campo de la historia de la educación, especialmente en Europa, puede hacer un uso mayor de los marcos críticos (de la raza) y de las herramientas de investigación que no disocian los sucesos históricos de las injusticias contemporáneas y persistentes.

역사 교과서 집필진의 고려시대 교과서 서사 인식과 서술 방향

역사 교과서 집필진의 고려시대 교과서 서사 인식과 서술 방향

Confronting “dark” colonial pasts: a historical analysis of practices of representation in Belgian and Congolese schools, 1945–2015

ABSTRACT Over half a century since the last wave of political decolonisation, the handling of “dark” colonial histories remains topical. Influenced by the postcolonial turn, this study aims to examine, from a novel historical and comparative perspective, evolving textbook representations of Belgian colonialism and its legacy in Belgian and Congolese school history education since 1945. Its diachronic and synchronic narrative analysis identifies continuity and change, and convergences and divergences, in perspectives, emphases, and silences in textbook narratives. Pinpointing the influence of colonialism and postcolonial discourse on educational practices of representation, the study explores the sometimes contradictory influences on these practices of politics, academic historiography, popular historical culture, and processes of educationalisation. The analysis illuminates parallel shifts in the two countries from triumphalist colonialist ideologies towards more critical postcolonial perspectives. In relation to educational practices of representation, often aimed at socialising citizens into worldviews sanctioned by the political dispensation of the time, the traces of these shifts have reflected dominant societal discourses while being largely at odds with historiographical advances. These dynamics are evidence of a slow process of decolonisation of existing power structures and knowledge systems which only gradually gave way to a postcolonial world still in the making.

Remembering the good: Constructing the nation through joyful memories in school textbooks in the former Yugoslavia

Studies examining the reification of nationhood narratives in history textbooks have typically focused on memories rooted in trauma (stories of loss of territory, victimhood, and perpetual enmity with neighbours), although glorification of the nation, ideas of who belongs to the nation, and what constitutes the nation, are also found in joyful memories. In this article, I examine how memories of joy are accounted for in a classical nation-building subject such as history. Which discursive strategies do textbooks use in instilling particular images of the nation in pupils’ heads, and how do they differ from those used in non-joyful events? Relying on content analysis of history textbooks currently used in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia, I examine how ‘joyful’ memories are represented in memories of ‘banal’ and everyday joy (memories of sports events, music, literature, and popular culture), and in memories of ‘hot’ or explicit nationalism (memories of victories in battles, reclaiming territory, etc). I conclude with reflections on the usefulness of studying memories of joy when examining issues of nation-building, national identity, and nationalism.

Exposing colonial representations: analysis of portrayals of Indigenous culture in Taiwan’s language textbooks

ABSTRACT Indigenous populations have historically been marginalized in the language curriculum in Taiwan. As education reform in the 1990s ensued, textbooks became democratized and aimed to include more local diverse cultures. However, the portrayal of Indigenous cultures in the new current language textbooks has not been adequately studied in past research and hence warrants examination. Informed by settler colonialism theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA), this study analyzed Taiwan’s secondary school language textbook narratives about Indigenous groups. Analysis results reveal that Indigenous elements are still underrepresented in the textbooks. The dominant textbook discourse also discriminates against Indigenous groups by removing Indigenous voices and misrepresenting Indigenous culture as primitive and backwards. This study is significant in incorporating settler colonial theory and language textbooks for analysis, which are less utilized in previous studies in Taiwan. A critical framework is offered for future curriculum analysis to ensure equity in representing marginalized Indigenous communities.

Utility Matters

The present-day standard textbook narrative on the history of growth theory usually takes Robert Solow’s 1956 contribution as a key starting point, which was extended by David Cass and Tjalling Koopmans in 1965 by introducing an intertemporal maximization problem that defines the saving ratio in the economy. However, the road connecting Solow to the Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans model is not so straightforward. We argue that in order to understand Koopmans’s contribution, we have to go to the activity analysis literature that started before Solow 1956 and never had him as a central reference. We stress the role played by Edmond Malinvaud, with whom Koopmans interacted closely, and take his travel from the French milieu of mathematical economics to the Cowles Commission in 1950-51 and back to France as a guiding line. The rise of turnpike theory in the end of the 1950s generated a debate on the choice criteria of growth programs, opposing the productive efficiency typical of these models to the utilitarian approach supported by Malinvaud and Koopmans. The Vatican Conference of 1963, where Koopmans presented a first version of his 1965 model, was embedded in this debate. We argue that Malinvaud’s (and Koopmans’s) contributions were crucial to steer the activity analysis literature toward a utilitarian analysis of growth paths.

Utility Matters: Edmond Malinvaud and Growth Theory in the 1950s and 1960s

The present-day standard textbook narrative on the history of growth theory usually takes Robert Solow’s 1956 contribution as a key starting point, with extensions on the savings decision (done by David Cass and Tjalling Koopmans in 1965) being the next important development. However, such account is historically misleading because it organizes past developments based on theoretical concerns. Our goal is to tell a richer story about the developments of growth theory from the 1950s to the mid 1960s, in the activity analysis literature that started before Solow’s model and never had him as a central reference. We stress the role played by Edmond Malinvaud, and take his travel from the French milieu of mathematical economics to the Cowles Commission in 1950-1951 and back to France as a guiding line. The rise of turnpike theory in the end of the 1950s generated a debate on the choice criteria of growth programs, opposing the productive efficiency typical of these models to the utilitarian approach supported by Malinvaud and Koopmans. The Vatican Conference of 1963, where Koopmans presented a first version of his 1965 model, was embedded in this debate. We argue that Malinvaud’s (and Koopmans’s) contributions were crucial to steer the activity analysis literature towards a utilitarian analysis of growth paths.

Identity and othering in past and present: Representations of the Soviet era in Estonian post-Soviet textbooks

This paper analyses representations of the ‘core Soviet era’ (1945-1985) in Estonian post-Soviet history textbooks (1989-2016). Attitudes towards the Soviet system have been a rich resource for identity building, and hence a powerful political tool across the whole of the post-Soviet block. Based on an analysis of sections about the Soviet era in Estonia in 21 textbooks, the paper takes a look at how textbooks reflect broader processes of social meaning making, identity building and othering after a profound social and political turn. In 1989 and during the early 1990s, perspectives and narratives in Estonian history textbooks were closely related to social memory and national politics, enacting a specific social representation of the Soviet era that dominated the Estonian-speaking public space during the 1990s. The Soviet era, Russia and local Russians became the main Others for Estonia and Estonians. Over time, public discourse has diversified. The national curriculum and textbooks, however, still maintain the canon that formed in 1990s and thus reflect earlier sentiments. Apart from the increasing salience of Soviet-era daily life in more recent textbooks, the thematic choices and emphases have changed little since the 1990s. Therefore, even if the style of writing has ‘cooled down’, issues of identity preservation, resistance and accommodation, together with a saliently negative representation of wrongdoings by the Soviet system, still prevail. On the one hand, this testifies to the resilience of an established tradition in the textbook genre in general. On the other hand, it reflects the dominance of an ethnocentric tradition in Estonian history textbook writing. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for interethnic relations in Estonia.

The Change of ‘Revolution’ Narratives in High School Korean History Textbooks

The Change of ‘Revolution’ Narratives in High School Korean History Textbooks

The Southern Kuril Islands Issue and narratives in textbooks of Russia and Japan

The Southern Kuril Islands Issue and narratives in textbooks of Russia and Japan

고려시대 ‘교과서 서사’의 해체적 읽기와 역사적 사고 과정의 구현

This study aims to investigate the way in which history curriculum and subject matters would be reconstructed for students to be able to learn historical contents while reading historically and critically. In this study, ‘textbook narratives’ are operationally defined as canonical explanation frameworks endured throughout changing national-level curriculums and textbooks up to this point. Based on historiographic review, curriculum materials and history textbooks, this study dealt with two textbook narratives such as diplomacy for ‘self-reliance and national interest’ and multi-cultural and dynamic Koryo dynasty narratives supporting modern values. The former has been highlighted with regard to foreign relationships in the Koryo dynasty including Seo Hee

Wither the Nation-State? A Comparative Analysis of Nationalism in Textbooks

What happens to the historic nationalizing purpose of schooling in an era of pervasive globalization? We address this question by examining patterns and predictors of nationalist emphases in 576 secondary school social science textbooks from 78 countries published between 1955 and 2011. Our descriptive and multilevel analyses show that nationalist narratives in textbooks persist into the recent globalization era and on average are not diminished in countries that are more economically, politically, or socially globalized. However, countries that occupy a dominant position in world society—either through Western cultural status or deeper embeddedness in international non-governmental organizations (INGOs)—tend to display lower levels of nationalism in their textbooks. Our examination contributes to the sociology of education by highlighting that the relationship between the global and the national is not a zero sum game: even in our globalized world, nationalist educational narratives are alive and well. We further contribute to the world society perspective by highlighting a tension between recent world cultural shifts toward individual rights and cosmopolitanism and the continued centrality of the nation-state model in world society. Our results suggest that attenuation of nationalist celebrations in schooling may be easiest for globally dominant countries whose legitimacy as nation-states is not in question.

Why national narratives are perpetuated: A literature review on new insights from history textbook research

National narratives have often served to mobilize the masses for war by providing myths and distorted interpretations of the past, while conversely wars were major sources for producing national narratives. Because national history is very likely to remain a central topic in history education, albeit in ways that differ from how the topic was used fifty years ago, it is important to gain a greater understanding of the underlying structures and mechanisms of these narratives in history textbooks. After outlining the historical interconnectedness of the emerging nation states and history teaching, this review article explains the complexity of the history textbook as an educational resource. Next, we identify some current problems and challenges in history textbook research. We continue by discussing promising research trends related mainly to national narratives, such as the analysis of images, the use of digital tools, and studies of the autonomy of textbook narratives and of history textbooks in relation to other media. Another recent reorientation is textbook research that uses a holistic approach. By this we mean studies that examine the history textbook as a whole: composition, periodization, visual intertextuality and chapters that do not at first glance appear to focus on national history. These studies offer new insights and explanations for the perpetuation of national narratives in history textbooks.