Historical competences and european/national narratives in textbooks

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the changes and survivals in the proposal of national/ European historical narrative and competences in the textbooks of Secondary Education. For this, six books of two different Spanish laws have been chosen, and a specific content: The Early Modern Age. A mixed research approach has been used, combining quantitative and qualitative techniques. The sample consists in a total of 1300 activities. The results indicate that the textbooks have improved in the type of activities and in the cognitive level required, but continue to dominate the contents of concepts, facts and concrete data. On the other hand, there is a change in the proposed narrative, in which knowledge of a cultural and artistic nature clearly dominates, and in which the main lines of the national narrative have been framed in a mainly European context.