Social Content Changes Over Three Editions of One Textbook (abstract)

Social Content Changes Over Three Editions of One Textbook
Bill Pellowe
Paper/Lecture. JALT 2000: The 26th International JALT Conference, Granship Conference Centre, Shizuoka, Japan, November 2 - 5, 2000

(abstract: long version)

This presentation reports the results of a case study regarding the changes in content to one textbook over three editions published over three decades. The original edition of the textbook in question is one of many which have been examined for social content, especially for gender bias. This particular edition was criticized extensively in several studies due to the sexist nature of its illustration and textual content. However, a new edition of this textbook appeared in 1983, and a third edition was published in 1994. In this presentation, the presenter first documents the extent to which problems identified in the 1978 edition were addressed in the subsequent two editions. The presenter then examines the two most recent editions in further detail, discussing:

vocabulary (with particular emphasis on occupational titles),
depictions of women in personal relationships to others,
quantitiative and qualitative distribution of occupational roles between females and males (subdivided by race), and
quantitiative and qualitative visibility of these occupational roles in terms of illustrations.

The presenter concludes that that through the three editions, the pattern of changes moves progressively towards a more egalitarian view, yet some problems still remain.

BACK TO BILL'S C.V.

This paper is derived from research for a paper done during my MA course. This is the bibliography from the paper:

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