Schulbuchforschung und -analyse
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://repository.gei.de/handle/11428/13
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Item Textbook Production: The entangled practices of developing educational media for schools(2017-12-05) Macgilchrist, FelicitasThis paper reports on a long-term ethnographic discourse analysis of educational publishing in Germany. It traces how textbooks and other curricular materials for history, politics and economics were produced, how decisions were made, and which human and other-than-human actors were involved. It includes a reflection on how digital technology is shaping the future of learning. The situated case studies speak to broad discursive struggles over democracy, gender, global hierarchies, racism, ethics, contingency, critique and the entrepreneurial self. After reviewing the literature on educational publishing, the paper draws on the case studies to list eight practices which play a role in selecting content: (1) market orientation, (2) knowledge delegation, (3) procedural authorization, (4) pedagogical goals, (5) scholarly accuracy, (6) ethical appropriateness, (7) imagined readers/users, and (8) discursive echoes. Finally, the paper discusses the dynamics of change in educational publishing, given the shifting, unstable, messy, materialdiscursive entanglements of the field. It suggests that previous “nodal talk”, which aims to identify a single node as the key decision-maker, is misplaced: Substantial change (progressive or otherwise), so the study shows, is brought about when several socio-material-discursive strands congeal into one (political, ethical, pedagogical, etc.) formation.