published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Pupils acquire skills, knowledge, values and attitudes through the important institution of education. An essential tool used in the transmission of these socially approved attitudes and values is the textbook. Because teacher content knowledge is an ongoing challenge in South Africa, school textbooks are being viewed as an important source of content knowledge. Textbooks used in the apartheid era in South Africa were subjects of numerous studies which found that textbooks were capable of transmitting the dominant ideology of the then apartheid government. Given the important role that textbooks are expected to play in postapartheid South African classroom, it becomes crucial to examine the ideologies being reflected and transmitted through this medium of instruction in the post-apartheid era. This study therefore set out to explore the ideologies that are manifest in Economic and Management Sciences (EMS) textbooks. This study adopted a qualitative research approach and engaged the tenets of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as its methodological framework. The use of CDA revealed how the content of the selected EMS textbooks represent particular ideologically orientations. The dominant discourses that emerged from the analysis were the stereotypical positioning of gender roles (a subjugation of women; contingency of women‟s success on male support); entrepreneurship leads to wealth creation; the advocacy of a free-market system; reinforcement of the hegemonic positioning of business; deficient service provisioning as a normality; business and production‟s precedence over the environment and finally that globalisation is natural and unproblematic. These discourses disclose that the textbooks under study have profound strains of neoliberal ideology. The content of the textbooks legitimates the values of the free market system and neoliberalism as it reinforces and reifies the normality of personal wealth accumulation and individual endeavour. EMS textbooks were thus found to have potential as hegemonic tools capable of influencing pupils toward assimilating and accepting the ideology of neo-liberalism as being natural, ethical, moral and acceptable. / Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.

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Since 2009 the textbook has emerged as a key educational resource in South African classrooms. This has been a direct response to rapid curriculum change, and real and perceived inadequacies in teacher content and pedagogic knowledge. Of significance though is that there is limited understanding of the nature of content selections that textbook authors invoke and the subtext thereof. The purpose of this study therefore is to understand how gender is represented in Business Studies textbooks available to teachers and pupils in the Further Education and Training (FET) band in South African classrooms. This qualitative study is located in the critical paradigm and engaged the tenets of Critical Discourse Analysis as the key analytical frame. A purposive sample of two contemporary Business Studies textbooks was selected to investigate the phenomenon of gender representation. Findings reveal that stereotypes of women and men are reinforced in the selected textbooks under study. Women were shown more frequently in home settings than were men. Men were shown in a wider variety of occupational roles than women. Textbooks portrayed men in a wide range of highly-paid, high-status occupations such as managing directors, doctors, lawyers etc. In both texts more males have been represented in leadership positions in government, economic and corporate institutions. The textbooks further represented women as being disabled and destitute. Males were portrayed as confident and educated in the usage of technology while women were portrayed as illiterate. Additionally men were portrayed as assertive and forthright business individuals, while women were also portrayed as emotional and as more reliant on, or needing, the advice of men to deal with business-related issues. Finally, the portrayal of firstness presented the male pronoun first in sentences and conversation as opposed to the female pronoun. The findings indicate that representations in the textbooks are gender-biased and gender-insensitive. Of concern is that these representations may be transmitted to school learners. A critical approach to the selection and use of textbooks is thus necessary. Much work needs to be done by key role players in the educational sectors to ensure that gender inclusivity becomes a feature of South African Business Studies textbooks. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / References in English and Japanese. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-174).

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O trabalho analisa o percurso estabelecido pelo livro didático de Geografia Trança Criança, volume de 4ª série, desde as diretrizes e avaliação do MEC, no contexto do Programa Nacional do Livro Didático, até o uso numa determinada sala de aula. Trança Criança foi a coleção de Geografia mais bem avaliada pelo MEC no PNLD 2004. O objeto selecionado permitiu examinar práticas e representações de atores da cadeia do livro didático: MEC e avaliadores; indústria editorial (autores, editores e técnicos de editoração); e, por fim, professora e alunos de uma sala de aula. O estudo aborda a materialidade do livro e a descrição enunciada de conteúdo (geográfico e pedagógico), e observa seu uso com princípios de orientação etnográfica. Verificou-se que o livro foi pouco usado e de modo diferente do enunciado pelos protocolos de leitura; a disciplina Geografia desenvolvida na sala de aula também se distanciou do conteúdo do livro. Tal fato revela que as práticas pedagógicas inserem-se numa dinâmica interna própria e se relacionam àquilo que se denomina cultura escolar (Chervel). Isso pode contribuir para elucidar a distância entre o que se pretende no discurso oficial e o que sucede no âmbito escolar; entre o que preconiza a ciência de referência e o que ocorre na prática geográfica escolar; entre o que traz o protocolo de leitura do livro e o uso que se faz dele. A pesquisa revelou também problemas na escolha do livro naquela realidade escolar, mas que podem se repetir no país em outros contextos e situações: os professores que estavam lecionando para a 4ª série na ocasião da pesquisa não haviam participado da escolha do livro no PNLD 2004. No PNLD 2007, eles atuaram efetivamente e fizeram a seleção, embora não se saiba se os que escolheram os livros são os mesmos que os usariam na sala de aula, porque pode haver mudança de professores nas escolas de ano para ano. O Guia de Livros Didáticos foi pouco manuseado pelos professores, que consideraram sua linguagem de difícil leitura e excessivo o número de páginas para cada disciplina. Os professores entrevistados relataram que preferem verificar os livros, folhear suas páginas para poder escolher, em vez de se basear apenas na consulta ao Guia. O estudo de caso apresentado revela que muito ainda está por construir na política de livros didáticos, que precisa ser dialógica com as escolas, em virtude da dinâmica interna, rotina, dificuldades e cultura própria dessas instituições. / The assignment analyzes the route established by the didactic geography textbook Trança Criança, 4th grade volume. It traces the basic route from the guidelines and evaluation of MEC, in the context of the National Didactic Textbook Program (PNLD), up to the moment of use in a determined classroom. Trança Criança was considered the best collection of Geography textbooks as evaluated by MEC at PNLD 2004. The selected object allowed for the examination of practices and representations of actors from the textbook: MEC and evaluators; publishing industry (authors, editors and publishing technicians); and, finally, teachers and students in the classroom. The study dealt with the books material and a description of the stated content (geography and pedagogy), and observed their use with the principles of ethnography. The book was used very little and in a way contrary to that stated in literary protocols; the geography course developed in the classroom was also different than the content in the book. That fact reveals that the pedagogical practices are inserted with their own internal dynamics and relate to that which is called school culture (Chervel). This could help explain the distance between that intended in the official curriculum and that which succeeds in the educational environment; between that which proclaims the science of reference and that which occurs in real school geography practices; between that which brings the books reading protocol and its use. This research also reveals problems in choosing the book within that schools reality, but might be able to repeat itself around the country in other contexts and situations: the teachers that were teaching to the 4th grade during this research had not participated in choosing the book at PNLD 2004. At PNLD 2007, they effectively took part and made the selection, even though they didnt know if the ones that chose the books were the same ones that used them in the classroom, because the teachers could have changed from year to year. The Textbook Guide was handled very little by the teachers. They considered it difficult reading and excessive in the number of pages for each course. The teachers that were interviewed reported that they prefer to verify the books, leafing through the pages in order to make a choice, instead of just basing their decision on the Guide. The study of the case presented reveals that there is still a lot to do when it comes to textbook policies. There needs to be dialogue with the schools in virtue of the internal dynamics, routines, difficulties and their own separate cultures.

The study aims to investigate which kind of concept teachers at secondary level use in their education about the two religions, Buddhism and Hinduism. The study also aims to investigate if there is an ambiguity in the different concept and to see where teachers gather their information about the different concept. The study is inductive where written interviews have been used when collecting data. The results show that teachers use their textbooks available at their school to gather material. The results also show that there is a certain ambiguity in what kind of words that can be classified as concept. Words for buildings et cetera have been used by teachers as concept. The study also show that textbooks are different in their opinions about meaning of different concept and that concept used by teachers are not described in the mentioned textbooks.

The aim of this study was to find out whether the school history textbooks used in Transkei Junior and Senior secondary schools were adequate in helping pupils meet the demands of their course. The results of the study would be used as argument for or against the assumption that the type of textbooks used in Transkei schools, through their inadequacy in equipping the pupils with the necessary skills for "doing" history, do contribute to the high failure rate in history, especially that they are in most schools, the only recourse for both the teacher and the pupil. In particular the study intended to see what strategies the history textbooks used to aid concept understanding which is crucial to the understanding of history. Twenty three criteria, fourteen objective and nine subjective were used to assess the books for readability and for strategies which might aid concept understanding. Eight books were assessed: four Std 5 and four Std 8 books. The results showed that only three of the eight books catered for the development of skills of learning history and were suited to the level of the pupiils for whom they were intended . History textbooks therefore need to be improved so as to foster the skills of learning history. Their inadequacy could be a contributory factor to the high rate of failure. In-service and pre-service training in methods of textbook analysis can assist in textbook selection and for changes in methods of teaching to supplement shortcomings in books which are commonly used

This study partially replicates and re-explores specific dimensions of a textbook analysis of the presentation and use of specific grammatical elements and sociolinguistic variants in textbooks published in the United States for learners of French. Authenticity is situated as a central construct in the analysis of interrogatives, relative pronouns, and the negative particle ne in selected textbooks and ancillary materials. The findings reveal that little progress has been made over the past twenty years in integrating authentic representations of discourse into French-as-a-foreign-language textbooks.