On The Moral Education Contents In Junior High School English Textbooks By PEP

As one of the major subjects in basic education,the course of English possesses both instrumental and humanistic characteristics and its rich moral connotations have played an important role in school education.Taking as examples the five English textbooks by People’s Education Press(in short,PEP)for the junior high school,the current study has analyzed the moral contents through coding and counting their occurrences in the three plates of unit themes,listening-speaking-reading-writing materials,and illustrations.It attempts to display how moral contents are designed and presented in each textbook,to find out empirical evidences for the content setting of moral education for junior high school in English,and subsequently to propose suggestions for front-line teachers on how to give full play to the moral education function of English textbooks.Based on Mike Bottery’s explanation of the connotation of morality and the classification of the moral contents in the Manual and the Standards,this study firstly proposed a classification of moral education perspectives,processed the moral contents according to the relationship of intersection,inclusion,and independence,and hence defined the contents elements of each perspective and established an analytical framework as a whole.Secondly,a coding scheme was designed in accordance with the structural features of each plate of the textbooks.Of the contents composition and presentation of moral education,this study,applying the contents analysis method has made a detailed analysis and discussion,which can be summarized into five major aspects as follows:(1)The moral education contents can be classified into five perspectives: first,the personal perspective,which emphasizes healthy habits and English learning ability development;second,the interpersonal perspective,which emphasizes the quality of affection and filial piety and the ability to do things;third,the social perspective,which emphasizes rules and regulations and social responsibility;fourth,the ecological perspective,which emphasizes ecological and environmental awareness;and fifth,the cultural perspective,which emphasizes cultural awareness,cultural transmission and dissemination.(2)The moral education contents are designed with different emphases at each grade level: seventh-grade textbooks emphasize self-management,eighth-grade textbooks emphasize intimate relationships,and ninth-grade textbook emphasizes cultural awareness.(3)The composition of moral education contents embodies the following three characteristics.Firstly,these PEP textbooks comprehensively cover all the five perspectives of moral education contents,among which,the personal perspective and the interpersonal perspective have a higher frequency and account for a larger proportion,followed by the cultural perspective and the social perspective.Secondly,the personal perspective is the most prominent in the PEP textbooks,among which “healthy habits” is the most prominent.Thirdly,the total frequency of moral education contents and the proportion of each perspective of moral elements in one academic year are differing from those of another academic year.(4)The moral education content elements show differences in different plates and are slightly inadequate.First,in unit themes,there are significant differences among academic years.Second,in the listening-speaking-reading-writing materials: the personal and interpersonal perspectives are richer in moral education contents;the content element “love for the community” of social perspective and “green consumption” in the ecological perspective are rarely presented in the textbooks;the cultural perspective focuses more on “expanding cultural knowledge” and “understanding cultural differences”.The two elements of “love for the community” and “green consumption” are rarely penetrated.Third,in the illustration plate,the number of illustrations accords with students’ cognition,and the illustrations highlight the cultural perspective of moral education.(5)The distinguishing characteristics of moral education presentation are vividness,completeness,and systematization.To sum up,the moral education contents in the English textbooks reflect the concept of English core literacy and cover five perspectives of moral education contents;they also conform to the target students’ physical and mental development.However,the focus of the moral education contents and the way of presentation vary from grade to grade.Consequently,this study has proposed the following three suggestions for front-line teaching practice: first,in general,teachers should raise awareness of moral education as being the basis of daily education and teaching work;second,teachers should make reasonable use of the rich moral education contents in English textbooks according to the learning characteristics of students in each academic year;third,teachers should improve the use methods and make up for such moral education elements of rare occurrences as“love of community” and “green consumption”.