Textbooks and beyond: Educational media in context(s)

Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society

Volumn 1, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 1-20

  Lässig, Simone ^a  

^a TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF BRAUNSCHWEIG   (Germany)

Author keywords

Curricula; Educational media research; Identity construction; Knowledge control; Knowledge production; Knowledge transfer; Mutual perceptions; New media; Sociology of education; Textbook research; Textbooks

Indexed keywords

EID: 84859312797     PISSN: 20416938     EISSN: 20416946     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3167/jemms.2009.010101     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. Fundamental contributions from frequently differing theoretical perspectives are offered by Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Routledge, 1991)
2. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1980).
3. Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society (London: Heinemann, 1979).
4. Michael A. Apple, Ideology and Curriculum, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004).
5. Micheal A. Apple and Linda K. Christian-Smith, eds., The Politics of the Textbook (New York: Routledge, 1991).
6. Suzanne De Castell, Allan Luke, and Carmen Luke, "Beyond Criticism: The Authority of the School Textbook," in Suzanne De Castell, Allan Luke, and Carmen Luke, eds., Language, Authority and Criticism: Readings on the School Textbook (London and New York: Falmer Press, 1989), 245-60.
7. Stuart J. Foster and Keith A. Crawford, What Shall We Tell the Children? International Perspectives on School History Textbooks (Greenwich, CT: IAP, 2006).
8. Thomas Höhne, Schulbuchwissen. Umrisse einer Wissens- und Medientheorie des Schulbuchs (Frankfurt/M: Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, 2003).
9. Michael W. Apple, Official Knowledge: Democratic Knowledge in a Conservative Age (New York: Routledge, 2000).
10. Ludwik Fleck, Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp [1935] 1980).
11. Claudia Fraas, "Begriffe-Konzepte- kulturelles Gedächtnis. Ansätze zur Beschreibung kollektiver Wis senssysteme," in Horst Dieter Schlosser, ed., Sprache und Kultur (Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 2000), 31-45.
12. Foster and Crawford, What Shall We Tell the Children?, 1.
13. For a general orientation, see Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).
14. Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).
15. Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, Die Organisation des Wissens (Frankfurt/M. and New York: Campus, 1997).
16. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1991).
17. Max Scheler, Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Wissens (München and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1924), 1-146.
18. Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann, eds., Kanon und Zensur. Beiträge zur Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation (München: Fink, 1987), 15.
19. William Edward Marsden, The School Textbook. Geography, History, and Social Studies (London: Woburn Press, 2001).
20. Jason Nicholls, ed., School Textbooks Across Cultures. International Debates and Perspectives (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2006).
21. Foster and Crawford, eds., What Shall We Tell the Children?.
22. Wolfgang Höpken, "History Textbooks in Post-War and Post-Confl ict Societies: Preconditions and Experiences in Comparative Perspective," in Steffi Richter, ed., Contested Views of a Common Past: Revisions of History in Contemporary Asia (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 2008), 373-96.
23. See also the special issue on textbooks and textbook re search of the International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research, vol. 3, no. 2 (2003).
24. Stuart Foster, "Whose History? Portrayal of Immigrant Groups in U.S. History Textbooks, 1800-Present," in Foster and Crawford, What Shall We Tell the Children?, 156.
25. Laura Hein and Mark Selden, eds., Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), 4.
26. Hanna Schissler and Yasemin Nuhoglu Soysal, eds., The Nation, Europe, and the World. Textbooks and Curricula in Transition (Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2005).
27. Philip G. Altbach "The Unchanging Variable: Textbooks in Comparative Perspectives," in Philip G. Altbach et al., eds., Textbooks in American Society. Politics, Policy, and Pedagogy (New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), 237-54.
28. Falk Pingel, "Can Truth Be Negotiated? History Textbook Revision as a Means of Reconciliation," ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 617 (2008): 181-98.
29. Hein and Selden, Censoring History.
30. Theoretical and methodological issues of textbook research have only rarely been discussed up until now. Nicholls, for instance, describes textbook research as "essentially under-theorised" (see Nicholls, "The Philosophical Underpinnings of School Textbook Research," Paradigm 3, no. 1 [2005]: 24-35).
31. Peter Weinbrenner, "Methodology of Textbook Analysis Used to Date," in Hilary Bourdillon, ed., History and Social Studies-Methodologies of Textbook Analysis (Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1992), 21-34.
32. David Scott and Robin Usher, Researching Education-Data, Methods and Theory in Educational Inquiry (London: Castel, 1999).
33. Eckhardt Fuchs, "Internationale Schulbuch- und Curriculumrevision in historischer Perspektive," in Eva Matthes and Carsten Heinze, eds., Das Schulbuch zwischen Lehrplan und Unterrichtspraxis (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 2005), 193-210.
34. Falk Pingel, Unesco Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision (Hanover: Hahn, 1999).
35. Pingel, Unesco Guidebook.
36. Karl-Ernst Jeismann, "Internationale Schulbuchforschung. Aufgaben und Probleme," Internationale Schulbuchforschung 1 no 1(1979): 7-22.
37. The acceptance of the Franco-German history textbook-Histoire/Geschichte vol. 3: Europa und die Welt seit 1945 (Stuttgart: Klett, 2006).
38. Histoire/Geschichte vol. 2: Europa und die Welt vom Wiener Kongress bis 1945 (Stuttgart: Klett, 2008) developed jointly by previous "arch enemies," has once again emphasized this point. Nevertheless, textbook research found itself confronted by new challenges and conflict situations in the past two decades, to which the "German model" of bilateral textbook commissions is no longer a sufficient response (Pingel, "Can Truth Be Negotiated?").
39. Nicholls, "The Philosophical Underpinnings," 24
40. Höhne, Schulbuchwissen, 21.
41. Jeismann, "Internationale Schulbuchforschung," 11.
42. In 1995, he elaborated that-in Europe at least-it was no longer primarily a case of "preventing the will to war by dissolving concepts of the enemy, but rather of conveying a shared will to the future that reaches beyond national identities" (Ursula A. J. Becher, "Perspektiven der internationalen Schulbuchforschung-ein Gespräch mit Karl-Ernst Jeismann," Internationale Schulbuchforschung 17, no. 1 [1995]: 63).
43. Thanks to Lars Müller, Michael Riemann, and Monika Wrobel for their statistical analysis.
44. More than half of the essays have focused on textbooks, followed by articles on non-specific media on general questions of education. Four percent of all essays dealt with new media and mass media, and only 1 percent with other educational media such as museums or memorials.
45. Although the journal International Textbook Research was oriented toward an international readership, over 60 percent of the authors came from Germany. The largest non-German groups represented were the United States (38), Great Britain (31), France (16), Canada (13), Switzerland (10), Russia (9), and the Netherlands (9).
46. Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason-on the Theory of Action (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998).
47. Idem, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998).
48. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (London and Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977).
49. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things.
50. See also Nicholls, "The Philosophical Underpinnings,"
51. Idem, "Methods in School Textbook Research," International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research 3 (2003) http://www.centres.ex.ac.uk/historyresource/journal6/6contents.htm, (accessed 10 April 2008), 2.
52. Staffan Selander, "Designs of Learning and the Formation and Transformation of Knowledge in an Era of Globalization," Studies in Philosophy and Education (2007), www.springerlink.com/index/22p5w47l48135242.pdf (accessed 2 June 2008), 10.
53. Even Selander (2007), who is convinced that digital media demand completely new designs for learning, must admit that, in Sweden, where there are many computerized schools, "long and strong traditions still dominate much school work."
54. For some interesting points, see Eric Bruiellard, Bente Aamotsbakken, Susanne Knudsen, and Mike Horsley, eds., Caught in the Web or Lost in the Textbook? (Paris: IUFM de Caen, 2006).
55. Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996-98).
56. Friedrich A. Kittler, Literature, Media, Information Systems: Essay (Amsterdam: GB Arts International, 1997).
57. Gunther R. Kress, Literacy in the New Media Age (London: Routledge, 2003).
58. James A. Banks, Educating Citizens in a Multicultural Society (New York: Teachers College Press, 1997).
59. Alec Fyfe and Peter Figueroa, eds., Education for Cultural Diversity: The Challenge for a New Era (London: Routledge, 1993).
60. Roy Gardner, Jo Cairns, and Denis Lawton, eds., Education for Values: Morals, Ethics and Citizenship in Contemporary Teaching (London: Kogan Page, 2000).
61. Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, ed., Learning in the Global Era: International Perspectives on Globalization and Education (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
62. See, for example, Ute Ritterfeld and Rene Weber, "Video Games for Entertainment and Education," in Peter Vorderer and Jennings Bryant, eds., Playing Video Games-Motives, Responses, and Consequences (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006), 399-413.
63. Ute Ritterfeld, "Identity construction and emotion regulation in digital gaming," in Ute Ritterfeld, Michael Cody, and Peter Vorderer, eds., Serious Games: Mechanisms and Effects (Mahwah, NJ: Routledge/LEA, forthcoming).
64. Douglas Levin and Sousan Arafeh, The Digital Disconnect. The Widening Gap Between Internet-Savvy Students and Their Schools (Washington, DC: American Institute for Research, 2002), http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED471133 (accessed 11 May 2008).
65. Staffan Selander, "Designs of learning and the formation and transformation of knowledge."
66. The International Association for Research on Textbooks and Educational Media (IARTEM) regularly publishes conference volumes and the e-journal Research on Textbooks and Educational Media, http://www.iartem.no/ejournal/ejournal_call.htm.
67. The International Society for Historical and Systematic Research on Schoolbooks regularly publishes collections on a variety of aspects of textbook research, particularly historical issues; for example, Contributions to the Historical and Systematic Research on Schoolbooks, edited by Marc Depaepe, Carsten Heinze, Eva Matthes, and Werner Wiater (Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt).
68. In 1988 a Textbook Colloquium was founded at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Its aim was to promote the interdisciplinary study of textbooks. The main focus is on the history of education and textbook publishing, on the writing of textbooks, on collecting books, and on the sociology of the classroom.
69. There were three volumes of Paradigm, Journal of the Textbook Colloquium published. Staffan Selander has now developed a new opportunity with the e-journal Designs for Learning, http://www.designsforlearning.nu. One of the most influential national institutions is the American Textbook Council, which occasionally publishes reports.
70. Höhne, Schulbuchwissen, 157.
71. R. Bowe and S. J. Ball with A. Gold, Reforming Education and Changing Schools (London: Routledge, 1992), 12, systematize contexts differently. They differentiate between the "Context of Text Production," the "Context of Infl uence," and the "Context of Practice."
72. Foster and Crawford, What Shall We Tell the Children?, 6.
73. On the following, see Bowe and Ball, with Gold, Reforming Education and Changing Schools, 12.
74. Until recently, only a few studies have been available on the use of different media in the classroom. This particularly affects qualitative analyses of reception that investigate impact and/or meaning as well as how frequently or evidently the media are utilized.
75. Höhne, Schulbuchwissen, 16.
76. Michael W. Apple, "Education, markets, and an audit culture," Critical Quarterly 47, nos. 1-2 (2005), 11-29.
77. idem, "The culture and commerce of the textbook," in Michael W. Apple and Linda K. Christian-Smith, eds., The Politics of the Textbook, 22-40.