Bibliography: pages 140-157. / This study provides evidence that most teachers choose their class textbooks haphazardly and without evaluating them. As a result, bad textbooks are as likely to be chosen and to succeed commercially as good ones are. One consequence of this is that many publishers and authors continue to get away with producing bad textbooks. The study begins by describing the context in which school textbooks are chosen. It gives an overview of the textbook's role, and concludes that it is an indispensable part of an effective education system, especially where other resources are lacking. The study then considers the degree to which South African textbooks fulfil their roles; it concludes that most textbooks in schools are poor, many being incomprehensible to their audiences, but attention is also drawn to some positive textbook development that has taken place. The study next considers how and why so many poor textbooks have been selected by educators: it summarises the part played by education departments and publishers, and reviews the state of textbook evaluation as a discipline. It concludes that South African educators are poorly equipped to evaluate and select textbooks. Against this background, the study describes an investigation of how teachers select textbooks for their classes. The findings are that choice is haphazard and that evaluation, in the rare instances when it takes place, is usually unsystematic and superficial. In conclusion, the study recommends that research into textbook development is done to provide a theoretical framework for effective evaluation, and that training and other support in textbook evaluation for teachers is established to improve selection practices. The study hypothesises that the resulting demand from a broad base of well-informed textbook-selectors in schools will give authors and publishers a more powerful incentive than any other pressures can to produce materials that withstand systematic, critical and wise evaluation.

The aim of this essay is to study how cultures are presented in English textbooks for A-level students in Sweden. The aim is divided into three research questions, what does culture in English teaching mean, how is the English-speaking world presented in the textbooks and is the image that is presented stereotyped or does it try to challenge it?The study comprises of four textbooks from 1998-2008. The theoretical frame used in the essay is Edward Said’s Orientalism. Results show that much of the focus is on countries from the inner circle of the English-speaking world and that foreign cultures are mostly represented in topics such as racism and ethnicity. People from minority cultures also appear in a context, where they are presented as unique since they do not fit in the average stereotype image connected with their culture. Hence minorities come to symbolize “the other”. The exercises in the textbooks focus to some extent on reflection about culture and comparisons between different countries, and their habits. The majority of the texts focus on the Western world, that is the US and Great Britain either because of the geographical location of the texts or because of the author.

This paper covers the portrayals of Captain James Cook within Hawaiian education. It begins by providing a backdrop to early European portrayals of Captain Cook and then proceeds to investigate how these portrayals changed as they were incorporated into Hawaiian textbooks. The paper then continues to illustrate the changes made in Cook’s portrayal within Hawaiian textbooks and how these changes coincide with the prevailing interests of the eras in which the authors wrote them.

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Thesis advisor: Marilyn Cochran-Smith / Changes in climate are being experienced by people globally, and increasingly pushing into school science. Educators struggle to make sense of the critical thinking and agency youth will need to face such changes. To this end climate change curriculum, teaching and learning in schools has garnered significant attention in educational research in the last decade. This is particularly important given that formal education is viewed as an important canvas for building the capacity of young people. However, curriculum materials are mostly understudied and taken for granted. In addition, there is also a paucity of scholarship from the global South with respect to climate change education. To address the need for climate change education as well as inclusion of international perspectives, this dissertation presents an analysis of climate change content in select textbooks and supplementary educational materials from Bangladesh, California & Ghana, and three widely different jurisdictions. Using a cultural politics framework, I explored the following questions related to climate change content in textbooks and supplementary materials: (1) How is climate change portrayed in select official/state approved textbooks (2) How is climate change portrayed in supplementary materials? (3) What are the similarities and differences the textbooks and supplementary materials? Using a classical content analysis approach, I show that the content in all three textbooks acknowledged the contributions of human activity to climate change, for example discussing the primary role of human activity to the warming of the planet. However, there were some distinct differences when it came to discussions around the scientific consensus on climate change. While Bangladesh fully noted the scientific consensus, California presented mixed messaging and Ghana did not reference the scientific consensus at all. The textbooks from the three jurisdictions included local and global climate change impacts and policy solutions. My analysis also showed that the two supplementary materials from the United States used different frames to challenge each other’s messaging. And while Heartland Institute cast doubt on the scientific consensus, the Paleontological Research Institution embraced it. Lastly, the United Nations, as an exemplar of content intended for an international audience, was constructed similar to the textbooks in attempting to balance local and global perspectives on climate policy solutions. Importantly, I argue that textbooks and supplementary materials need to provide robust content that attends to the context-specific complexity of climate change. I discuss cultural influences on climate change education. Finally, I conclude with recommendations for the inclusion of more localized ideas on climate change impact and policies / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

The focus of this study is change in environmental content in Mexican primary school textbooks before and after the decentralization of public education in 1993. The literature review in the opening chapter gives the background information on environmental education, internationally and in Mexico. The authors mention and discuss the major groups involved in the development and initiation of programs and curriculum such as the UNESCO, Man and the Biosphere (MAB), and the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). The gradual Mexican ownership of the environmental cause and the promotion of awareness in Mexico lead to the main part of the study. This study employs both manifest and latent content analysis to find trends and themes in the textbooks. The primary focus of the manifest content analysis is individual words while the latent content analysis stresses excerpts and images from the textbooks. The use of an Excel database and PivotTables generated by Excel to correlate data indicates areas to examine for differences in content between the textbooks. In addition, the use of the two forms of analysis provides validation and significance when the data agree. The final portion of the study offers some general conclusions for the analysis and a summary of how the environmental content has increased in the primary school textbooks over the period studied. There are also suggestions for future research on the content of textbooks, surveys of environmental knowledge and attitudes, and alternatives to the formal education implied by the use of textbooks in the classroom. / Master of Arts