The purpose of this study was to apply the research technique, content analysis, to the five most widely used United States high school history textbooks. The textbooks were investigated to obtain an objective, systematic, quantitative, and qualitative description of the textual content concerning the period of World War II.The population studied consisted of the five most widely used high school United States history textbooks. Three categories, people, events, and themes were researched in all five textbooks. Each of 126 specific items were coded from each textbook according to inclusion, frequency, magnitude, and direction. Jury validity was utilized, and three professional historians used as independent coders confirmed instrument reliability.Findings1. Events were included in a greater percentage than people or themes.2. American, British, and German political leaders were included more frequently than Russian, Italian, or Japanese leaders.3. Allied leaders were treated more favorably than the Axis leaders.4. The specific items were superficially treated with the textbook lacking indepth presentation of many specific items.Conclusions1. There exists a commonness and similarity among the most widely used United States history textbooks with a distinct lack of differences in that they generally present a series of chronological events and facts.2. The textbooks less than fully achieve the goals established for history courses by state and national organizations.3. Omissions, biases, inaccuracies, and distortions appear in the most widely used American history textbooks because of the forces of the mass market and apparent inadequate usage of current historiography.

Drawing on two research questions, this study presents an understanding of the nature of heritage in selected contemporary Grade 10 South African history textbooks, and elucidates factors responsible for the depiction of heritage in a particular way. The context that informed this study was that of South Africa as a post-conflict society. Using the interpretivist paradigm and approached from a qualitative perspective, this case study produced data on three purposively selected contemporary (post-1994) South African history textbooks with regards to their representation of heritage. Lexicalisation, a form of the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used as method to analyse the pre generated data from the selected textbooks following Fairclough’s (2003) three dimensions of describing, interpreting, and explaining the text. The study adopted a holistic approach to heritage as a conceptual framework whilst following social constructionism as the lens through which heritage was explored in the selected textbooks. My findings from this study concluded that although educational policy in the form of the NCS-History clearly stipulates the expectations to be achieved from the teaching and learning of heritage at Grade 10 level, there are inconsistencies and contradictions at the level of implementation of the heritage outcome in the history textbooks. Key among the finding are the absence of representation of natural heritage, lack of clear conceptualisation of heritage, many diverse pedagogic approaches towards heritage depiction, a gender and race representation of heritage that suggests an inclination towards patriarchy and a desire to retain apartheid and colonial dogma respectively,and finally a confirmation of the tension in the heritage/history relationship. The study discovered that factors such as the commercial and political nature of textbooks, the lack of understanding of the debates around the heritage/history partnership, and the difficulties involved in post-conflict reconstruction are responsible for this type of heritage depiction in the textbooks. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Edgewood, 2011.

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The aim of this study was to identify how historical literacy manifested itself in Grade 10 history textbooks. The use of two distinct time periods was used in my study to chart the changes in history education, in South Africa. Pre-1994 detailed the nature of history education and history textbooks during the times of the Boer and British Republics to apartheid era history education. Post-1994, on the other hand, depicted the change, or lack thereof, of history education and history textbooks from the 1994 democratic elections to its current state. Despite the changes in history education between the two eras, the use of history textbooks was, in the context of this study, the vehicle to deliver the curriculum. In the light of the progression of history education and its link to history textbooks, the purpose of this study was threefold, which was purported through the use of three research questions, namely to firstly ascertain what kind of historical literacy was envisaged by the NCS – history. Secondly, to examine the views of history textbook authors concerning their opinion of school history (historical literacy). Thereafter, it was imperative to analyse Grade 10 textbooks in order to ascertain how historical literacy manifested itself therein so as to satiate the question of the thesis. My data sources were the National Curriculum Statement for history (2003), Grade 10 history textbook authors and three Grade 10 history textbooks. The methodology was qualitative and informed by an interpretivist approach. Open coding and Fairclough’s (2005) analytic instrument for discourse analysis was applied to data. Thereafter, a deeper conceptual understanding of historical literacy was engendered through the use of the Toolkit for Historical Literacy. Historical literacy is a complex process wherein a number of criteria facilitated the concept. Attainment of these factors of historical literacy would ensure mastery of the discipline. Historical literacy comprised of historical content knowledge which was a balance between knowing information as well understanding the past. Multiple sources, together with historical skills and historical concepts were vital for historical literacy to construct and evaluate knowledge. In addition, historical literacy furthered a case for developing a moral and ethical framework wherein the past could be judged. Historical consciousness, born of historical literacy, allowed for learners to make a connection with the past. Furthermore, historical literacy encompasses a number of modern concepts for the case of historical literacy, namely ICTunderstandings and representational expression. Therefore, historical literacy should be multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional. The findings of this study were numerous. Historical skills, historical concepts, understanding and knowing the past, moral judgements in history and a source-based methodology was the encompassing form of historical literacy from the Grade 10 history textbook authors. At the core of historical literacy in Grade 10 history textbooks, are the role of the historian and the political influence of the NCS - history. The NCS - history endorsed all history textbooks in South Africa. The Grade 10 history textbooks revealed a potentially alarming factor for the case of historical literacy. The historical literacy advocated by the Grade 10 history textbooks is a far cry from the international version of historical literacy. No modern features of historical literacy were represented (ICT-understandings, representational expression, applied science, contention and contestability and historical consciousness). Moreover, more traditional features of historical concepts of change, cause and effect as well a means of morally judging the past through empathy are missing or not appropriately dealt with. Historical literacy in Grade 10 history textbooks is functional in terms of sourcing, contextualising and corroborating information so as to understand an event rather than know it. Historical skills are needed to complete this process. Ultimately, the type of historical literacy found in Grade 10 history textbooks is reminiscent of the Schools History Project. Historical literacy in South African Grade 10 history textbooks is not evolving or dynamic and it does not meet the requirements of the international version of historical literacy. However, it does partially satisfy the NCS - history requirements for historical literacy. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

This paper presents an analysis of history textbooks used in schools in Sweden and Norway. The intention of the research was to study how the history textbooks describe communism and communistic dictatorship mainly during the cold war. The result of this study is that there were no big differences between Swedish and Norwegian history textbooks, but there are, however, some differences in how communism was described between the authors and also over time. Mostly, the books that were written in the post cold war period were somewhat more critical to communism in the eastern Europe (even thought they mainly handled with Stalin´s communism. And they also set quotationmark between Stalin´s communism and the nazi terror during World War two.

This thesis deals with the image of the First Czechoslovak Republic as presented in history textbooks in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The main goal of the thesis is to reflect the approach to and transformation of the way the First Republic was depicted in the history textbooks issued between 1948 and 2004. The theoretical part of the thesis briefly outlines the development of school structure and curricular documents in the period observed as well as the transformation of historiographical production with respect to the Czechoslovak interwar history. Furthermore, the key terms are defined that are based on crucial topics and generalizations of the present-day Czech historiographical production. These terms are then studied in history textbooks in six periods matching the chronology of education reforms and subsequently analyzed in terms of explanation and interpretation methods. The final part of the thesis presents each of the observed interpretation changes in relation to the selected key terms. The greatest textbook alterations were found in connection with the change of the social and political circumstances after the fall of the Communist regime.

D.Phil. / History education is part of the intellectual project of high school education and its textbooks matter in terms of their educational brief. History textbooks have a significant role to play, especially in South African classrooms where many teachers have no access to any other media or subject knowledge. Moreover, textbooks represent a sample of a body of knowledge, which can be understood to pass on a sociocultural inheritance, encoded in language and images, as they record the education system's epistemological position in a 'slice in time' with the prevailing mindset in it. This mindset is partly captured in the curriculum, which can be interpreted to affirm that controlling the present and shaping the future rely to some extent on controlling the manner in which the past is presented. The study aims to find out how texts construct or encode this mindset, and how the strategy of their constructors can be recognised or decoded. This aim is realised through exploring a particular topic, namely that of theories of race and racism and their impact, in a set of 10 officially approved grade 11 history textbooks and their teacher guides. To fit the aim of this study, sociocultural theory was deemed as appropriate for the overall lens informing the methods of text analysis and the discussion of the findings. From such a theoretical perspective, instruction and accompanying semiotic tools are considered to be a major avenue for mediating students' /pupils' motives, cognition, and their social development, and hence textbooks, as instructional media, can be regarded as important mediating tools. To investigate this dynamic I pose two research questions: Firstly, how can an interdisciplinary approach to textual analysis be utilised to construct a model for textbook analysis? This question arises from a lack of theoretical, epistemological and ontological considerations of textbook research and addresses a gap in the literature. The second question is, how can such a model be demonstrated 'in action' to analyse one theme in a series of 10 grade 11 history textbooks? Given the historical theme of the impact of 19th century race theories leading to genocide, this research has a humanistic interest in the subject matter and this, in turn, defined the bounded case of this inquiry. The methods are my own hybrid of hermeneutic analysis, discourse analysis, visual analysis, question (pedagogic) analysis, critical analysis, and semiotic analysis. These are all interpretive methods, which are suitable for an inquiry into meaning-making. To realise the aim of constructing an interdisciplinary model for text analysis, I devised five categories or dimensions, namely "making own historical knowledge", "learning empathy", "positioning a textual community", "fashioning stories", and "orientating the reader". These five dimensions are explained in detail, both their deduction from theory and their induction into the research process. These dimensions, once stabilised, had become heuristic devices that guided not only the way I looked for 'answers' to the research questions, but also the overall structure of the thesis.

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This study revolves around calculating the extent of appearance of both anonymously and named men and women as well as determining whether or not Yvonne Hirdman’s gender theory is applicable on two versions of a Swedish educational history textbook called Epos: historia: för gymnasieskolans kurs A (2008) and Epos [historia] 1b (2012), published for two different curriculum. Our qualitative investigation of two parts of the book’s content proves that the two principles of gender system are present in both books, although to a lesser extent in the latter version. Calculating the material, results have shown that anonymous men and women are almost equally presented in Epos 2012, which is not the case in the 2008 version. However, studying the extent of named men and women, we can determine that male characters are overrepresented in both versions, with a total of 80 % of all persons named in the books being of the male gender. To further problematize our material, we discuss how the student’s identity, based on E.H. Erikson’s theory of identity, could be affected by the subject matter content. We believe that it can be malicious to student’s self-image, and that it is the teacher’s responsibility to debate with the students about how the gender system’s two principles are present in our society.

The legacies of World War I in British culture are often explained by terms such as disillusionment and futility or by the understanding that the war shattered nineteenth century ideas of progress. These were not, however, the images of the war offered by the nation’s public and state sponsored secondary schools during the interwar years. By examining the categories of commemoration and curriculum, this study explores how British educational institutions mobilized the memory of the war in order to avoid cynicism and promote traditional forms of national, class, and gender identity. The first two chapters focus on how school memorials grew out of wartime communication within extended school communities in a way that privileged a heroic and traditional language of “high diction,” a concept developed by Paul Fussell. The following two chapters explore the ways in which discussions of how and why to teach history created a rhetoric of non-revolutionary citizenship and shaped portrayals of the war itself in a variety of British textbooks. Both processes elevated ideas including national and imperial patriotism, sportsmanship, self-sacrifice, personal and international leadership, and a continued faith in progress. This was initially accomplished by the exclusion of other possible narratives of the war, but the success of this interwar educational narrative was, in turn, undermined by subsequent economic and political events.