School Textbook Research : The case of geography 1800-2000

This book is an analysis of the evolution of geography textbooks in use in the United Kingdom from 1800 to the end of the twentieth century.

The author assesses the influence of geographical and scientific ideas, of pedagogical theories and practices of the cultural ethos of society and of technological change on the production and publication of textbooks.

The battle of ideas is ever present: physical scientists compete with Mackinderite geographers for supremacy at the turn of the nineteenth century; conceptual revolutionaries and quantitative geographers battle with regional and humanistic specialists in the 1960s and 1970s.

These intellectual skirmishes are represented in the textbooks produced.

But so are the wider issues within society: imperialism, racial bias, sexism and prejudices of various kinds.

The author argues that textbooks reflect society, but they tend to follow changes rather than lead them.