Abstract
This study delves into the unique perspectives of authors of U.S. history textbooks on critical events, such as World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War, employing quantitative ethnography (QE) and epistemic network analysis (ENA). These methodologies offer a lens through which divergent viewpoints can be analyzed, thereby revealing differences among documents sharing a common theme yet presenting varying narratives. The study presents the epistemic networks of two history textbooks and compares three shared events routinely discussed in each book. The findings emphasize the diverse patterns of perspective-taking by both the topic and the author, as evident in the connections drawn between common constructs of historical narratives. This research underscores the need to acknowledge the presence of multiple historical viewpoints and political perspectives, even within history textbooks from the same country. Exploring these perspectives is essential to fostering a more comprehensive understanding of historical events and promoting critical thinking and nuanced interpretations. The outcomes of this study suggest that applications of QE and ENA can be instrumental in critically examining how history is constructed and communicated, thereby advancing our understanding of the pedagogical implications in history education.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Korostelina, K.V.: History education and social identity. Identity 8(1), 25–45 (2008)
Loewen, J.W.: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. The New Press (2018)
Becker, C.: What is historiography? Am. Hist. Rev. 44(1), 20 (1938)
Goldstein, D.: Two States. Eight Textbooks. Two American Stories. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/12/us/texas-vs-california-history-textbooks.html. Accessed 28 Apr 2023
VanSledright, B.A., Kelly, C.: Reading American history: the influence of multiple sources on six fifth graders. Elem. Sch. J. 98(3), 239–265 (1998)
Schusler, T.M., Decker, D.J., Pfeffer, M.J.: Social learning for collaborative natural resource management. Soc. Nat. Resour. 16(4), 309–326 (2003)
Pingel, F.: UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision. UNESCO Publishing (2016)
Nicholls, J.: Methods in School Textbook Research. Int. J. Hist. Learn. Teach. Res. (Print) 3(2), 11–26 (2003)
Grever, M., Van Der Vlies, T.: Why national narratives are perpetuated: a literature review on new insights from history textbook research. London Review of Education (2017c)
Ruis, A.R.: Quantitative ethnography of policy ecosystems: a case study on climate change adaptation planning. In: Advances in Quantitative Ethnography: 4th International Conference, ICQE 2022, Copenhagen, Denmark, 15–19 October 2022, Proceedings (pp. 414–428). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31726-2_29
Shaffer, D.W., Collier, W., Ruis, A.R.: A tutorial on epistemic network analysis: analyzing the structure of connections in cognitive, social, and interaction data. J. Learn. Anal. 3(3), 9–45 (2016)
Foner, E.: Give Me Liberty!: An American History. 3rd edn. W. W. Norton, New York, NY (2014)
Stoff, M.B., Davidson, J.W., Lytle, M.H., DeLay, B., Heyrman, C.L.: US: A Narrative History, Volume 2: Since 1865. 7th edn. McGraw-Hill Education, New York, NY (2014)
Crabtree, C., Nash, G. B.: National standards for united states history: exploring the american experience. Grades 5–12. Expanded Edition. Including Examples of Student Achievement. National Center for History in the Schools, University of California, Los Angeles, 10880 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 761, Los Angeles, CA 90024-4108 (1994)
Siebert-Evenstone, A., Irgens, G.A., Collier, W., Swiecki, Z., Ruis, A.R., Shaffer, D.W.: In search of conversational grain size: modeling semantic structure using moving stanza windows. J. Learn. Anal. 4(3) (2017)
Shemilt, D.: History 13–16 evaluation study. Holmes McDougall (1980)
Zajda, J.: Discourses of Globalisation, and the Politics of History school textbooks. Springer eBooks (2022)
Thomas, D.: A general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative evaluation data. Am. J. Eval. 27(2), 237–246 (2006)
Tan, Y., Ruis, A.R., Marquart, C., Cai, Z., Knowles, M.A., Shaffer, D.W.: Ordered network analysis. In Advances in Quantitative Ethnography: 4th International Conference, ICQE 2022, Copenhagen, Denmark, 15–19 October 2022, Proceedings, pp. 101–116. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31726-2_8
Acknowledgements
We thank the research team for their invaluable contributions. We also acknowledge ChatGPT for enhancing the language clarity of our drafts, but human authors rigorously reviewed all content before submission.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kim, J., Barany, A., Liu, X., Zambrano, A.F. (2023). The Stories We Tell: Uncovering Hidden Narratives in History Textbooks Through Epistemic Network Analysis. In: Arastoopour Irgens, G., Knight, S. (eds) Advances in Quantitative Ethnography. ICQE 2023. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1895. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47014-1_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47014-1_18
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-47013-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-47014-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)