A Comparative Study On The Case Selection Of Geography Textbooks In China And America

It has been ten years for high school geography curriculum reform of china,as its one of the important carrier and core results, the geography textbooks has withstanded the inspection of nearly a decade of testing in practice.The cases are integral part of geography textbook,and pay more and more important role in geography teaching,especially as the case teaching method has been widely accepted,and now it has become the important focus of the new round of curriculum reform. So the research of case selection is necessary under the circumstances.According to the new idea and the new requirements of the new curriculum reform,this study compared the case selection between the American mainstream high school geography textbook "scientific discoverer:Geography geology, environment and the universe" and our high school geography (mandatory1) published by PEP.In this paper, literature, expert advice, comparative analysis are used to analysis the difference of content, Layout, characteristics between the two textbooks, and each of them has its own characteristics,but also each have their advantages and disadvantages.The results are as follows:(1)The Cases in mandatory1has bigger length and capacity,and distributed in the body of some columns as research,case, reading,activities and issues,but short in "Scientific discoverer".The latter has little cases with big length,and most of them were separated from the text.(2)The number of chapters in similar cases is almost roughly the same."scientific discoverer" takes more,but its distribution are incongruous with different types of cases.(3)Words style of mandatory1seems a little bit stiff in text representation.(4)Mandatory1required a greater emphasis on cases combination,each of the cases can make up their deficiencies to satisfy the students from different levels and different geographical.By contrast,"Scientific discoverer" isn’t inferior in this content,the combination of graphics and charts with text highlights its characteristic.In terms of student engagement,"scientific discoverer" even better,the body text of the experimental design,knowledge development aspects are reflected.(5)Both cases selection performs perfect,their cases are rich and varied material,and both at home and abroad.(6)Both of them are objectively true and typical in case characteristics,but its daily feature is reflected.The reasons for differences between them are mainly based on the differences in geography curriculum emphasis, educational systems and the concept of high school.And then I put forward to improve the high school geography textbook case proposal.The first is to strengthen the textbook interesting and readable;the second is to enhance the textbook of social and practical;the third is to strengthen the self-study textbooks.