역사교과서 체제에 대한 수요자의 인식과 개발 방향

Abstract

This study aims to identify the needs of teachers and students for history textbooks and to make suggestions for textbook developers to meet those needs. For this, this study examined what features of textbooks teachers consider most importantly when selecting textbooks, how textbook readers assess current using history textbooks, and specifically in what features students find useful comparing the currently-used textbooks with the previous 1990s textbooks. Data collection included questionnaire surveys, classroom observation and interviews. Middle school teachers and students participated in nation wide survey. Among them, focus groups were chosen to conduct interviews. The findings are as follows. Most of all, history teachers considered internal characteristics of textbooks to be more important when selecting textbooks, including selection and organization of contents. The survey also highlights that teachers seem to demand effectiveness and variety of visual aids for teaching. Most of teachers point out the level and amount of textbook contents inappropriate for their students. Compared to the internal characteristics, the impact of external characteristics was relatively low. In overall, textbook readers including teachers and students were not dissatisfied with the organization and internal aspects of textbooks but more satisfied with external characteristics of textbooks such as design, colors and editing. Especially teachers address the problems of the current history textbooks such as the weak linkage between Korean history and World history and low applicability to changing educational contexts such as block time classes. This study suggests that history textbook developers should strive to identify the demands and needs of textbook readers as well as empirical studies should be conducted on how history textbooks are used in classroom contexts.