A Multi-dimensional Study On The Construction Of Moral Values In High School English Textbooks In China(1978-2019)

In recent years,the government,stressing the importance of ideological security,puts the textbooks construction and management into its governance and carries out new-round curriculum reform to fully implement the fundamental task of Li De Shu Ren(policy of Fostering Virtue Through Education,which was proposed on the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in November of 2012).Under this background,how to realize the educating value of English curriculum has become an important research topic.As a response to the national call for Li De Shu Ren,the present study seeks to explore the representation and legitimation of moral values in four generations of English textbooks(15 books)for senior high school students published by the People’s Education Press over the past 40 years.Specifically,the present study seeks to answer the following three research questions:(1)What moral values do textbooks represent?(2)How are these moral values legitimated?(3)To what extent do the moral values reflect the changing sociopolitical and educational climate?Theoretically,informed by perspectives of moral values and moral education,I proposed a three-level framework of moral values in the Chinese context to categorize,comprehend,and interpret the representations of moral values in the EFL textbooks used in the Chinese context.Methodologically,the present study,following a convergent mixed methods design(Creswell &Creswell,2018).Firstly,it involves collecting quantitative data through content analysis.Then,it used van Leeuwen’s framework of discursive legitimation(2007,2018)to conduct in-depth qualitative analysis.Finally,a diachronic comparison was carried out as a further enhancement of the explanation to explore how the moral values embedded in the EFL textbooks reflect the ever-changing curriculum goals during the past four decades.Findings of this study reveal that:(1)all the four versions of EFL textbooks for senior high schools have shown profound moral implications which echoes the traditional Chinese philosophy of education;(2)the distribution of moral values in these textbooks covers different levels,ranging from personal values to social and ecological values;(3)discourses of the textbooks become increasingly more multimodal and moral values incorporated in these textbooks become increasingly more diversified and intense;(4)moral values embedded in the textbooks published earlier were often legitimized in the form of authorization and cautious story-telling,while those in the textbooks published in recent years were often legitimized in the form of rationalization;(5)a shift from an emphasis on “how to behave” to“how to think” and “how to behave” can be identified.Practically,this study can provide some implications for classroom teaching by revealing how moral values are incorporated into the textbooks.First,the teachers may be more aware of the moral elements explicitly or implicitly incorporated into the textbooks,and consequently,will consciously design value-driven activities which provide students opportunity of critically thinking about moral values while improving their language competency.Second,the inclusion of the latest 2019 version EFL textbooks for senior high school students into the research corpus allows the practitioners to make full sense of the textbooks design concept.Third,the diachronic perspective in this study may provide an empirical basis for future textbooks writing.