Relationship Between Geography Textbook Content Design And Middle School Students’ Thinking Development

Textbook is the most important schooling curriculum resource, and also an important indicator to measure the level of a country or region’s education. Therefore, strengthening the construction of the experimental textbook is particularly important and urgent. Since2003, People’s Education Press, SinoMaps Press,Hunan Education Press and Shandong education Press, issued high school geography textbook version respectively. Although they’re written in the same curriculum standards, they have different emphases and strengths on the characteristics, but also have their own shortcomings.High School Students stage is the key period to develop abstract thinking ability. The goal of high school learning geography is to develop students’geographic thinking and intellectual skill, not just the memory accumulation of geographical knowledge. How to write textbooks, what to do in the improvement of the existing four-edition textbooks that can fully develop students’geographic thinking, and lay a solid foundation for further learning, become all geographic educators’work. Due to limited space of the energy and knowledge, The paper focus on the featured content of each high school geography textbooks (compulsory one) and the layout of one specified main content based on--’movement of the earth’, to analyze their relations with the thinking of middle school students. The reason we choose the’movement of the earth’is that it need strong ability of image thinking and abstract thinking to appreciate the principle that can stronger this paper’s analysis result.We found that each edition textbook have its own focus and typesetting on featured content and key content, which to help student develop their visual thinking and abstract thinking skills. People’s Education Press’s edition have appropriate number of featured content and have a balanced proportions with visual thinking content and abstract thinking content. Shandong education press’s edition have little featured content and it focus on abstract thinking skills. These two version of the materials have smaller degree of innovation, and are relatively less effective on the development of students’thinking. SinoMaps Press’s edition had made several references to United State textbook. Compared with the original teaching material, this material has big degree of innovation. It provides a rich emotional material; Hunan Education Press edition had arranged large featured content within some activities to Culture Student’s geographic integrated thinking. In comparison, these two version of the materials have better effect on the development of students’thinking skills. In the aspect of key content, People’s Education Press’s edition have confused logic in presentation. much key content is hidden in activities in Hunan Education Press edition. Shandong education press’s edition have simple and logical text structure that covers the most department of knowledge. It also have advantage for using many pictures to describe the geography principles; SinoMaps Press’s edition have a clear structure and smooth integration with other part in this book. In addition, its elegant picture is an another advantage. Although there are shortcomings in the design of other details on the content, by contrast with other textbooks, these two versions textbook have better effect on developing students’ thinking skills.At last, there are some advice in the scope of application of each textbook and how to choose textbook according to the two factors in this paper, including the regional economic condition and the teacher’s own ability, to meet textbook editor’s intention to develop student’s thinking skills better. Meanwhile, there are some advice in the scope of application of each textbook based on the result of analyze each textbook’s extent and depth in developing student’s thinking skills.