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History Textbook Research:
Issues and Methodologies toward a
School Historiography

New Trends in History Textbooks Research

 This article addresses selected items that best represent current
trends in methodology of history textbook research. The article
claims that the evolution of history textbook research reveals
that school historiography is a challenged area for history
education as well as for social, historical, pedagogical, and/or
political studies. It argues that significant conceptual and
methodological generic transformations occur within the frame
of this historiography and the corresponding research.

 First, transformations emerge from a significant shift toward
the content of a history textbook and its analysis. From a
classical analysis of content—linked with historiography—we
move to a didactical view, influenced by new structural
appearances of textbooks and changing teaching practices.

 Second, transformations result from a movement toward a
kind of text that does not give answers but supports the
procedures of learning and if its in with the laboratory
learning environment encouraged by most school subjects.

 Third, there is a slow change turning the focus of research
from the textbook as a product to its uses and perceptions.
Within this framework, the interest of researchers
addresses the practices involving the textbook in
classrooms and the teachers’ and students’ reception of the
textbooks rather than the messages included in the content
or the goals of the producers as related to the state, the
authors, and the market.

Textbooks as the Key Media of Research
in History Didactics

 Dominant translation of the curriculum in schools and they
continue to constitute the most widely used resource for
teaching and learning.
 They are perceived as national instruments perpetuating
cultures and ideologies.
 They are believed to reflect the complicated relationships
between power and knowledge.
 History textbooks, as social constructions, cultural artifacts,
sources of collective memory, pieces of master narratives,
and the autobiographies of nation-states, 5 constantly
attract critical attention.
 History textbooks are investigated by history didactics as
well as by other disciplines, especially political science,
history of education, sociology of education, and
linguistics.

 Linguistic approaches refer to the readability of history
textbooks (analyzing language, implicit content, and
narrative structure) and to the written text (enunciative,
argumentative, and/or actantial discourse).
 A history textbook addresses history as taught in school,
perhaps also referring to its relationships with other
subjects.
 It acts within a subjects system as well as in a school
system, privileging textual knowledge and contents,
intellectual and practical abilities, or social aims and
actions.
 In order to be accepted by teachers and by parents and to
find asocial legitimacy, history textbooks must address
social representations of “school history” and “the aims
of learning history.” More specifically, they have to deal
with the issue of the past as the propagator of collective
identities, such as those held by communities, minorities,
nations, Europe, or other supranational organizations.

 Textbooks should “combine history as an objective
process, history as an academic science, history as a
school subject and history as a didactic product.”11
At the same time, they should aim toward a user-
friendly design; for example, pictures in textbooks
should be used as historical sources per se.
 Textbook authors must override the culture or
memory they are rooted in (social background), in
order to create a “globally oriented” consciousness
for students (ideological aim).
 Textbooks should demonstrate that they are written
by individuals, which challenges the status of school
history knowledge.

History Textbooks as Objects
of Controversy

 They unveiled the potential for diverse expectations and
representations of the “good textbook” to clash, not only
in terms of contents but also in terms of activities or the
underlying pedagogical model.
 They also demonstrated the possibility for discrepancies
between the institutional requirements and the actual
teaching, which leads to passive or active opposition.
 Images of the Self and of the other implicitly define who is
rooted in a certain place, who is a “true” citizen of the
state, and design the legitimate collective identity.(e.g., as
native nations)
 History of education recalls attempts to revise history
textbooks in order to promote cooperation.

 The idea that “history textbooks should be improved
to serve international understanding” is widely
accepted.
 History textbooks should teach a “nonviolent
disobedience” of civil law and military orders.

Production and Distribution of History
Textbooks:
Economy, State, and Authors

 In Romania, as well as in other former communist
countries, the 1990s saw the publication of four to ten
textbooks for each grade, but the publishers and
authors were faced with the hasty solution of several
problems. These included “to restore the position of
history as a school topic,” “to balance academic
integrity with market requirements,” “to focus on
new methods and activities such as
multiperspectivity,” “to integrate national, European
and world history, and to give ethnic or religious
minorities fair treatment,” to name but a few. It is
hardly surprising that such undertakings result in
varying levels of success.

The Contents of the Textbook: History
in Light of Education

 History textbooks are thought to have a significant impact
on the development of collective and specifically national
identity.

 School textbooks have significantly shaped negative
stereotypes in a variety of ways. They have done so
through unfavorable and inaccurate depiction of the other
community; through the omission of the other’s history and
culture; by ignoring peaceful periods of coexistence
between the communities and stress on the conflictual eras;
through a lack of elements that might promote trust and
familiarity between two people and through the omission
of the existing minority groups.

 The same applies to the space allotted to women in
history textbooks, most of which are written by
men. An analysis of Austrian textbooks has shown
that, even when they are not, “the mere fact of
participation of women [in the writing] does not
guarantee broadened representations of women in
history.” Often women of the past are erased from
pages, or merely depicted in “women’s corners” or
“women’s history.”
 Textbooks also promote political ideologies, and
not only in dictatorial states.

 Several conference contributions addressed the
encouragement of historical thinking, analyzing “work
orders” or exercises, promoting “research learning,” or
the critical use of primary sources. Equally important to
the learning process is the development of competence
and narrative perspective. Learning history, a core issue
in abundant research, has recently expanded to textbook
studies.
 The textbook must then offer—alongside the historical
narrative—activities, laboratories, workshops, all aimed
toward historical thinking.

 The exercises of Slovak textbooks, for instance, tend to
focus on the authors’ texts rather than on sources, and
are more oriented toward reading than toward thinking.
In this case, an agenda of exercises, questions, and tasks
was proposed in order to increase their scope and focus
on the students’ needs. Activities that would “stimulate
the historical thinking of fifteen to seventeen year old
students when placing concepts, events and persons in a
timeline and historical context” were also presented,
further underlining the gap between this and traditional
history teaching.

The Use of History Textbooks:
Teachers and Students

 They are aware that the reading, and not the text, passes on
meaning and allows students to build an understanding of the
past and of history. In order to acquire some knowledge of the
role and effective use of textbooks, and to investigate why they
are used the way they are, research has focused on students’
reading actions, on teachers’ instructions, and on interpretations
of history textbooks by both groups. Such research requires
observation and interviews, both of which are new
methodologies in textbook research and which supplement
content analysis or indeed constitute an object for study
themselves.
 A small survey in the UK (thirty teachers) has shown that only a
minority of history teachers are making substantial use of
textbooks. This tendency is usually connected to the teachers’
ideas regarding the use of new technology in the history
classroom.
 Students (British ones at least) do not enjoy working from a
textbook. The teachers’ instructions and the organization of the
lesson, as well as the importance of the students’ earlier
experiences with textbooks (whatever the subject) influence what
the students read in them.

 The impact of using textbooks on students’
achievement might constitute a new field of study.
 The “think-aloud” methodology could also be
used in understanding historical texts

Changes of Focus and Conceptual
Renewals

 Changes in the design of textbooks as well as
epistemological and pedagogical developments
regarding the notion of “text” have oriented history
didactics research from the written text to the
documents and other elements comprising a history
textbook.

 The paratext enlarges the area of the content, and its
expanse and diversity increase via documents,
graphics, iconography, learning targets, cards, and
colors defining specific areas for key notions or ideas.

 Moreover, DVDs and CD-ROMs are often sold with
the textbooks. This is rather a new development. In
some cases, the electronic resources that accompany
some books remain almost unused; students
sometimes ignore the very existence of such media in
the learning packages and teachers mostly
concentrate on the teachers’ materials.

 The latest trend is “on-line materials available on the
Internet (knowledge base) which help individual
learning, motivation, creating new teaching-learning
methods and strategies.”

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New Trends in History Textbooks Research

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