The black power movement helped redefine African Americans' identity and establish a new racial consciousness in the 1960s. As an influential political force, this movement in turn spawned the academic discipline known as Black Studies. Today there are more than a hundred Black Studies degree programs in the United States, many of them located in…

This dissertation addresses how federalism is portrayed in high school U.S. history textbooks. The guiding questions of this study include: (1) How well do senior high school U.S. history textbooks portray federalism through description of domestic disorders? (2) When domestic disorders are included in these textbooks, how accurately are they…

A study analyzed gender bias in dialogues as presented in three recent, popular textbooks designed for early intermediate or intermediate English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction. Analysis focused on dialogues intended for practice in speaking. For each textbook, data were gathered on: different male and female character types; number and…

This study reviewed six history textbooks widely used in grades 7-12 across the U.S. Using a story-line analysis, the findings of this study suggest: (1) textbooks reinforce negative stereotypes of Latin Americans as lazy, passive, irresponsible, and, somewhat paradoxically, lustful, animalistic and violent; (2) the method of description employed…

This paper compares the prescribed American and Chinese letter writing formats as outlined in texts and examines actual letters from American and Chinese writers to determine how they compared to these formats and, if they differed, to identify possible reasons for these differences. After teaching students of Mandarin Chinese a basic lesson on…

This content analysis study explored the impact of recent decades on the appearance, content, content emphasis and textbook features of 1970 edition and the 1992 edition of "Magruder's American Government." This volume has been the leading high school government textbook ever since it was first published in 1917. The study pre-selected…

Beliefs about texts and textbooks is an active area of inquiry in social psychology but the results of these studies are largely unknown in the fields of English education and composition. For most students knowledge and beliefs function very similarly. What a student knows he or she inevitably believes; and what he or she believes means a…

It is the purpose of this paper to describe and analyze the "moral content" of six preservice science "methods" textbooks. Six recently published textbooks, including both elementary and secondary levels, were examined by way of a method which attempted to identify those text segments with "explicit moral guidance." The paper reports on the…

This paper is based on a portion of the curriculum analysis of elementary science textbooks that was conducted as part of a larger Elementary Subjects Center study of curriculum materials used in literature, mathematics, science, social studies, and the arts. A commonly used elementary science curriculum series, Silver Burdett and Ginn's…

This paper examines how values education is taught in Chinese and American elementary schools and what values are advocated in Chinese and American elementary textbooks. Differences in attitude, content, method, and outcome are analyzed in the context of social and cultural backgrounds. It is concluded that American textbooks tend to emphasize…

This study examines the extent to which some students comprehend four integrated science textbooks and the relationships among their grade level, gender, school location and type, and ability to comprehend the texts. Jamaican high school students (N=160) were the subjects of the study which involved data sources such as cloze, comprehension,…

A study is described that will investigate whether cultural referents found in the Defense Language Institute (DLI) American Language Course are biased toward North American cultural norms, and whether Saudi Arabian military personnel in language training using those materials are affected by the cultural information contained within them. The…

Various perspectives on the highly complex textbook debate are presented in this book, which includes essays by educators, publishers, policymakers, and scholars. Currently, the advocates of higher academic standards, coherence, and quality occupy the strongest position in the debate. Part 1 looks at textbooks from a historical perspective. The…

The case method is a key tool that teachers can use to develop their practical knowledge and practical thinking styles in both preservice and inservice education. The case method in Japanese teacher education has been a major approach for more than 100 years. The approach to case method described here has been implemented in five settings: (1) the…

Using a sample issue of the "Journal of Communication" as a point of comparison, a study examined the content of 10 introductory textbooks for the field of communication. Results indicated that textbooks scarcely ever acknowledge methodological pluralism, and when they do, they simply cite it as an existing factor in the field of communication and…