Comparative Research Of Hunan Education Press’s Old And New Version Of The Eighth Grade Geography Textbooks

Geography textbooks are the important support to transfer geographical knowledge. With the new publish of high school’s geography curriculum and geography textbooks of Hunan’s version promoted in the whole country, the comparative study on Eighth grade geography textbooks between old and new versions not only can enrich the theory about the study of geography textbooks in high school period, but also provide references for textbook compilers to understand material and give more effective instruction.This study based on the changes of geography, to apply the method of literature review, comparative research method and statistic method, then through the system of textbook, picture system and activity system to research, to compare the new and old textbook of the Eighth Grade geography textbook, and using the questionnaire in teacher’s group of the Hunan Education Press. It noted the following conclusions:(1) The nature of the New Curriculum Standards were more comprehensive, the curriculum concepts were more prominent, the curriculum design ideas were more concise. And the action verbs expressed in the content of the standards were richer, the content of the standard were more concise.(2)As the respect of text system, the arrange of the chapters of the new Eighth grade textbooks were more reasonable; words expressed were more concise; knowledge and information had also been updated. As for picture system, the overall number of geographical image of the new materials had a larger growth, and the image quality had been improved. From the point of the active system, the number of activities decreased and the proportion of analysis activities increased, while the difficulty declined.(3)However, there are still many deficiencies: the content of the new textbooks lagged behind social development, which can’t reflect the latest achievements of science in geography. In addition, the content needs more links with students’ life. Besides the briefer expression and larger amount pictures challenge the students who are weak in understanding pictures. Although the number of activities declined, there is still too much from the point that the learning time for the students and the time for the curriculum were too little. What’s more, the activities that can attract student’s interest were not too much and lack the specific procedures to put it into practice.According to the conclusions and findings, some advices were offered for teachers to improve instruction: more focus should be put on student’s life; integrate the image resource to make the best use of them; focus on students reading ability and choose the proper ways to arrange activities; the preparation and guidance for the practical activities should be pay more attention.