The Assistant Systems In Chinese And British History Textbooks: A Comparative Study

In academia, presently, comparative studies on history textbooks focus more on different editions provided by various domestic presses, within the same period or among different periods. Even among studies concentrating on textbooks from different regions and countries, the comparative studies between Chinese textbooks and British ones are rare, and thus such direction of study is believed to worth much more efforts.On facing such a good opportunity, meanwhile quite a challenge, this thesis is going to propose a concept-the assistant system of a history textbook. Based on this concept, the thesis is going to further its Chinese-British history textbook comparative study. Our samples are textbook from People's Education Publishing House, China, and Modern World from Causeway Press Ltd, Britain.The assistant system of a history textbook refers to abstracts before lessons, pictures among lessons, and exercises throughout the textbook. The system features assistant functions and technical requirements.Actually, based on this concept, the whole textbook is divided into two basic systems: on one hand, the assistant system; on the other hand, the primary system, which contains the majority of the textbook and refers more or less ideological contents. The reason of doing this is to facilitate the study.As the saying goes:stones from other hills may serve to polish the jade of this one, this thesis hopes to provide some suggestions for the further improvement of our own history textbook. Researching findings of educational psychology and history, as well as the curriculum standards of both China and Britain, will be referred throughout this thesis.