Study On The Structure Of Hong Kong Senior High School Chinese History Textbooks Under The Background Of Educational Reform

After widespread consultation, Hong Kong Education Commission proposednew educational objective in1999. Based on it, Hong Kong educational reformstarted. In this context, something changes in the subject of Chinese History. Itpays attention to student learning instead of history knowledge. It emphasizes onmastering the methods of learning history and cultivating students learning ability,which echoes with the new educational objective. Along with the educationalreform and the innovation of Education Philosophy, all aspects of educationchange significantly. While textbook, which is one of the main educationalresources and the basis of the teaching activities, is affected by the educationalreform obviously.High school Chinese History textbook published by Modern EducationalResearch Society in2009is chosen as example. This research analizes thestructure of Hong Kong high school Chinese History textbook and explores thechanges of it in the context of educational reform. Some pieces of proposals ofamendments for mainland’s history textbooks can be provided. The historyteaching theory in the high school can also be enriched.The research is divided into four parts.The first part mainly explains the purpose and signiifcance of the study,research synthesis, research methods.The second part mainly introduses the process of Hong Kong educationalreform and the changes in the subject of Chinese History.The third part analizes the structure of Hong Kong high school ChineseHistory textbook from the macroscopic and microscopic angle. The macroscopicincludes content system, while the microscopic angle is divided into four parts:foreword, contents, text and appendix.The last part analizes history textbooks in several major characteristics,additional columns “school-based assessment", reflecting the new trend of HongKong academic evaluation; learning activities diversiifcation，motivatingstudents’ learning interest; combining multiple historical data, to promote thedevelopment of students higher-order thinking skills; closer to Hong Kong social status, to cultivate students’ citizen consciousness. There are two shortcomings inthe textbook. One is lack of the systematic guidance of historical research method,the other one is less relativity with the history of Hong Kong. Based on theseconclusion, the research further propose two suggestion to optimize mainland’shistory textbooks: firstly, beautify the appearance of textbooks to win thegoodwill of students; secondly, increase the proportion of the inquiry texts tocultivate students ability of learning to learn.