A Tentative Study Of "Student-oriented" History Textbook Design

In2004, senior high school has begun put into effect new course reformabout history course, and ‘student-oriented’ is the core concept of this new coursereform. Thus, it arouses the research interest in ‘student-oriented’ education, which aimsto establish studnets’ main position in education, motivate students to transform learningstyles. The purpose of the paper is to probe into the “Student-oriented” history textbookdesign under the condition of new course reform.This paper takes senior high school’s compulsory history textbook of PeoplePress’s Version (I) as example, which is widely used in some regions of Sichuanprovince. Document method, comparative method, interview and questionnaire methodare adopted in this study. This paper includes four parts, the first part deals with theconceptual and theoretical basis of ‘student-oriented’ history textbook. The second partfocuses on the comparison among the four different versions of compulsory senior highschool’s history textbook of People Press’ edition, and reports the field work withteachers and students, then points out the manifestation and existing problems of‘student oriented’ history textbook’s design; Based on the conditions listed in the secondpart, the third part puts forward the way to deal with the design about ‘student-oriented’senior high school textbook; some recommendations on the way how senior high schoolteachers and students use the textbook are listed.The initiative of this paper lies in the originality of the subject and effectiveness ofresearch project. Few studies have touched upon the comparison among the fourdifferent versions of senior school history textbooks. The latest version of senior schoolhistory textbook has been used in Sichuan Province for no more than three years andboth teachers and students are trying to adapt to the new version, therefore, this study isof great effectiveness. The significance of the study is to put forward thecountermeasures to the design of history textbook, to provide some references to thecompilers of textbooks, to recommend some feasible suggestions on how to use theStudent-oriented history textbooks.