Introduction: Contrasting Perspectives on School Textbook Development and Discourse Worldwide

Abstract

This chapter examines the foundation of textbook analysis, which focuses on ways in which internal educational policies and ideological goals of the dominant groups in the society affect textbook and curricular content worldwide. Textbooks reproduce politically determined knowledge about historically ignored or devaluated groups, such as women, religious, or ethnic minorities. Critical analysis of dominant political interpretations and beliefs in the area of teaching history or citizenship education reveal the priorities of so-called national aims in the broader areas of culture and identity policy. The chapter overviews the volume’s focus on a wide range of educational topics concerning nationhood and citizenship, as well as gender issues and the role of religion(s) in school textbooks and curricula. These perspectives are comparatively framed in this chapter, and a complementary theoretical framework (apart from critical and conflict-oriented theories) is introduced (e.g., normative isomorphism). We found it essential to focus on such a comprehensive set of topics because they provide important clues to the overall patterning of social and educational life by textbook narratives and curricular aims. The collection of texts offers a cross-cultural comparison for the political determinants of teaching civic education, history, and other social subjects at schools around the world.