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Transnational Identities and Values in Textbooks and Curricula

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Abstract

This chapter reviews some of the most prominent directions of study on educational media stemming from recent scholarly developments occasioned by the interrelated transnational methodological and thematic turns. I focus on two aspects in research on textbooks and curricula worldwide: (1) transnational identities, understood as novel loci of affiliation, particularly in the European context, and (2) transnational values, understood as building blocks of a universalising ethos which promotes the projection of transnational identities. The chapter first reviews the key thematic clusters, research questions, and geographic areas addressed in this field of study. It then presents dominant theoretical and methodological choices, to finally move to key findings and debates that structure current preoccupations with transnational identities and values in textbook research. An evaluation of the current state of research and suggestions for future directions are given at the end.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A bilateral research project on conceptions of good citizenship has compared European and East Asian materials from 1945 to 2010 using a transnational design; findings on Chinese, Japanese, French, German, and English textbooks and curricula are reported in Soysal and Wong (2006), on French and Japanese textbooks and curricula in Soysal and Wong (2010), on English and French textbooks and curricula in Soysal and Szakács (2010), and on Chinese and Japanese citizenship curricula in Soysal and Wong (2015).

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  1. Georg Eckert Institute - Leibniz-Institute for International Textbook Research, Braunschweig, Germany

    Simona Szakács

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  1. Simona Szakács
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  1. Georg Eckert Institute - Leibniz-Institute for International Textbook Research, Braunschweig, Germany

    Eckhardt Fuchs

  2. Georg Eckert Institute - Leibniz-Institute for International Textbook Research, Braunschweig, Germany

    Annekatrin Bock

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Szakács, S. (2018). Transnational Identities and Values in Textbooks and Curricula. In: Fuchs, E., Bock, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53142-1_14

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