A Comparative Study About High School History Textbooks Published By People’s Education Press And Elephant Press

In recent years, the curriculum reform of Chinese history in secondary school has been increasingly deepened. According to General High School History Curriculum Standards(Tentative), different writing teams have compiled four different versions of history textbook, which were published by People’s Education Press, People Press, Elephant Press and Yuelu Press and have been put into use throughout the country. As the most important teaching vehicle, history textbook plays a decisive role in popularizing new teaching concepts. Studying on new versions of history textbook has great influence on realizing the goal of curriculum reform, changing students’ learning methods and promoting all-round development of students. In most areas of Henan Province where I am staying, the history textbooks which were published by People’s Education Press and Elephant Press have been used. Therefore, this dissertation makes a comparative analysis about high school history textbooks published by People’s Education Press and Elephant Press through taking an example of the unit “The Trend of Opposing Aggression and Seeking Democracy in Modern China”. Hopefully this may benefit teachers when they are using textbooks.This dissertation is divided into three parts which are introduction, main body and conclusion.The introduction mainly explains the reason to choose this topic, its significance, primary research methods, research status, innovation points of the dissertation, etc.The main body is divided into three chapters. The first chapter does a comparative study of the concrete content in the unit “The Trend of Opposing Aggression and Seeking Democracy in Modern China” of the two versions of textbook. Firstly, it analyses the content of the unit which is mentioned in curriculum standards. Secondly, it analyses the headline and introduction part of each lesson in the two units. Thirdly, it compares the concrete content of the text, including each lesson’s subtitles, essential knowledge selected by the text, historical pictures, supplementary text, annotation system, etc. Finally, it is the comparison of the exercises.The second chapter studies the advantages and disadvantages of the two versions of textbook on the compilation aspect.The third chapter is the suggestions and proposals related to the using of the two versions of textbook during the practice. Based primarily on the analysis and results of the above chapters, it offers some advice to history teachers and discusses matters needing attention about using the textbooks.Finally, this dissertation suggests that the development of history curriculum and the compilation of textbook should be a dynamic process and that there should be no best, only better. For people who regards history teacher in secondary school as the future occupation, such as me, this is not an end, but a new starting point where one’s knowledge could be enriched and reflection could be attained in the future teaching practice.