Though the field of Spanish heritage language (SHL) studies has seen a boom in research, such research has not yet addressed the materials available for SHL classes. This dissertation fills a gap in previous research by addressing the representation of US Latinos and US varieties of Spanish in the SHL context. The current study involves a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the presentation of both culture and language in intermediate level university SHL textbooks, in order to show how such texts present US Spanish-speaking people’s culture and their language varieties. Previous research on both history and Spanish as a foreign language textbooks show that US Latino populations in such texts are frequently reduced to numbers, faceless statistics or stereotypes (Arizpe & Aguirre, 1987; Cruz, 1994; Elissondo, 2001; Ramírez and Hall, 1990; Rodríguez and Ruiz, 2005; and van Dijk, 2004a; 2004b). Additionally, previous analyses of the presentation of Spanish in Spanish foreign language (SFL) textbooks show SFL texts provide “…varying or misleading intuitions about dialects of Spanish” (Wieczorek 1992, p.34; see also Fonseca-Greber & Waugh, 2003). This dissertation corroborates these findings in the SHL context and presents suggestions for improving the quality of materials used in the SHL context. The results of the current study clearly parallel those found by van Dijk (2004b); though the texts present “factual” information, it is the selective presentation of this information that culminates in an overall negative representation of immigrant and minority cultures, which is rooted in a metonymical understanding of what it means to be immigrant. Additionally, all the texts continue to promote a pseudo-Castilian variety of Spanish, while delegating student varieties of the language to appropriate home contexts. This bidialectal treatment of US varieties of Spanish excludes critical based dialect awareness altogether. This dissertation addresses the need to both improve and develop “…pedagogically sound textbooks and new technology materials designed to meet the Hispanic bilingual student’s linguistic needs” (Roca, 1997, pp.37-43). It is only through critical discourse analysis that we can assure that textbooks are indeed presenting a positive image of US Latinos and their language to students enrolled in university SHL classes.

This thesis examines how mental hygiene principles were adopted for a student audience through the elementary-level health textbooks series, Health and Personal Development, used in Ontario schools from 1952 until 1963. In particular, I explore the didactic messages pertaining to mental hygiene as they related to girls. The results of this analysis demonstrate that healthy mental hygiene and personal development for girls, according to the textbooks, meant becoming wives, mothers, and homemakers, as their own mothers model. While these roles required many skills and responsibilities, and provided women with a certain amount of agency in the female-dominated sphere, girls were represented in the textbooks as having a limited set of options in life: to emulate their mothers’ feminine domesticity, or to risk a life marred by poor mental hygiene.

In this doctoral thesis I develop a methodological system to facilitate the comparison of syllabus topics in history education across international contexts. The thesis brings together many years of work and while rooted in the philosophy of Hegel draws on the ideas and concepts of a wide plurality of thinkers. Essentially, the thesis is a 'synthesis', developing from my pre-doctoral experiences as an educator in the UK and overseas (thesis) and my critique of comparative textbook research (antithesis). In the doctorate, syllabus topics are understood to be composed of constellations of influencing variables or parts; the relationship between topic and variable conceived as reciprocally constituting and dialectical. Essentially, I argue that to compare curriculum knowledge the researcher need not necessarily compare 'things in themselves' - e.g. textbooks, examinations, official censorship guidelines etc., - but rather relationships and effects. Syllabus topics are thus understood as the expression of relationships with influencing variables. Only when variables and relationships have been identified and appropriately valued does it become possible to compare syllabus topics in a meaningful way. In this thesis I develop a concept of the researching subject that is neither totally centred nor totally de-centred. Modernism's centred subject assumes a research horizon that is both limitless and objective, while the de-centred postmodern subject denies the concept of horizons by championing only relative particularities and subjective experience. Identifying the hermeneutic element in the work of Hegel, Gadamer and Foucault I chart a location 'beyond' the oppositions. The subject is thus understood as an agent empowered to act, and perform critique, but within limits that are sensitive to cultural difference. The comparative researcher is thus conceived operating within a specified 'sphere of liberty'; the liberty to compare depending on the training, intercultural skills and first-hand experiences of the researcher. In this research the Second World War is utilised as an 'exemplar topic'. With the end of the Cold War the importance and significance of the war has receded in political terms. Nevertheless it remains as a popular subject in history classes around the world. Morally, the war continues to raise fundamental questions. But to understand the impact of the war as a syllabus topic in educational terms we must identify its form and content as an object. The syllabus topic as a whole is composed of a constellation of parts, influencing factors, push and pull variables. What is the 'power/knowledge' relationship between whole and parts in particular contexts? How does a particular syllabus topic express these relationships? It is argued that relationships between topic and parts must be identified if we are to begin to understand their effects in classroom settings.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The purpose of this thesis is to provide a workbook to accompany the current textbook, A First Course in Mathematical Modeling. The workbook will offer basic reviews of each lesson followed by detailed examples of how to work each model. Topics covered include difference equations, systems of difference equations, Lanchester equations, graphical analysis, proportionality, geometric similarity, model fitting, Monte Carlo simulation, and probabilistic and deterministic behaviors. The thesis will also provide a modeling toolkit for the DA student upon graduation. The toolkit will present graduates simple instructions and multiple modeling templates they can take with them upon graduation and use to solve real-world modeling problems in the field. Templates in the toolkit cover decision theory, discrete dynamic systems, expected value, Lanchester models, and two-person games. / Outstanding Thesis

The Swedish Curriculum for the upper secondary school states that teachers should “ensure that teaching in terms of content and its organisation is typified by a gender perspective” (Skolverket 2011, p. 9). Considering that there is no further information regarding what a “gender perspective” means in reality, this sentence could be interpreted in many different ways. This study aims to explore how EFL teachers deal with linguistic gender equality, and which strategies they use to maintain a gender inclusive language in their classroom. Six interviews were conducted with EFL teachers at upper secondary schools in Stockholm, Sweden. The results indicated that the teachers thought this was an important issue to consider in teaching, and that they had well-reasoned strategies for maintaining a gender perspective. The most prominently discussed strategies were encouraging reflection and discussion on these matters, and choosing appropriate literature that either would show a variety of different perspectives, or else would question the social norm. However, concerning their own language production, some of the teachers lacked explicit strategies for maintaining a gender inclusive language, which could derive from a lack in knowledge. Thus, this essay proposes that gender inequality in language needs to be more explicitly explored, both in teacher education and in further education for employed teachers. The teachers displayed an ambition to maintain a gender equal language teaching; and would benefit from more explicit tools to realize that.

Regionalistic Issues in textbooks of Civic Education after 1989 Summary This thesis focuses on civic education textbooks in the period after 1989 to the present. It includes recapitulation of the development of civic education as school subject and of the regional approach too. Contains a list of all the civics textbooks authorized the Ministry of Education for use in primary schools and grammar schools, including textbooks for pupils with special educational needs. The main topic of this thesis is to analyze the status of regionalist curriculum in basic education, while focusing on the 2nd degree and equivalent years of grammar school. In this context, it recapitulated the last major curriculum change in the Czech education system in the form of general educational program with emphasis on the status of regionalist curriculum. The last purpose of the work and its practical aspect is the identification and analysis of the historical homeland of the current contents of civics textbooks, its comparison with the current state of historical knowledge and pointing out the frequent historical inaccuracies and stereotypes, which are topics of regional history in the historical content of the curriculum of civics occur. The conclusion is devoted to recommendations which will be used in the creation of civics textbooks.

This master thesis Advertisements in Textbooks: A New Medium? covers the field of school textbooks for primary and secondary schools. Its aim is to analyse advertisements, which have become part of some textbooks. The thesis is also examining if the advertisements are in compliance with the Czech law. The project contains descriptive analysis of the found advertisements. It also comprises statements by the textbook publishers and by the Ministry of Education.

The purpose of this thesis paper has been to study three textbooks from Historia 1b and their chapters about World War 2. The theory influencing the paper is the gender theory by Yvonne Hirdmann, and the studied books are Alla tiders historia 1b, Historia 1b – Den lilla människan och de stora sammanhangen and Perspektiv på historien 1b. The thesis paper shows that men are presented as the norm in both the history itself, but also in the way the textbooks’ authors are retelling history. For example, one of the books authors is writing about workers and female workers in the same context. Women as a group are given a more descriptive writing than the individual females, while the individual men are more described than the group of men, who are almost exclusively written and described as soldiers. The authors of Alla tiders historia and Perspektiv på historien 1b have done a good job describing how the society changed during the time that has been studied, with women granted the right to vote, and the right to attend high school in Sweden were introduced. Women also got better conditions on the labor market, but this was only when the men were called into the war. Perspektiv på historien 1b is the most equally written textbook, as it does not make own divisions between men and women in text.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-01

The research aims to investigate the responses of teachers and learners in a particular rural context to a chapter from a South African English First Additional Language textbook which is currently being developed for commercial publication. The activities and content of the chapter aim to encourage learners to think critically about power relations in teenage relationships. The material was used in two classes of Grade 11 English learners by two English teachers from the same school. Data from classroom observations, from learners’ writing and from interviews with teachers and learners was analysed in order to respond to a series of questions which focus on teachers’ and learners’ responses to a theme which was assumed to be a sensitive and controversial one and responses to the design features of the material. Firstly, the theme appeared not to be considered sensitive or controversial by either teachers or learners. Secondly, the teachers ignored almost completely the pedagogic design of the materials and in doing so negatively affected opportunities for learners to learn. Possible explanations for both findings are discussed.