The purpose of this study is to explore whether contents of elementary social studies textbooks, basic component parts of learning environments, coincide with contents of human rights or not. On the basis of these explorations, this study presents con...
The purpose of this study is to explore whether contents of elementary social studies textbooks, basic component parts of learning environments, coincide with contents of human rights or not. On the basis of these explorations, this study presents contents related to human rights in elementary social studies textbooks for 4th and 5th graders, suggests directions of textbook development for human rights education in the future.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows :
First, for considering human rights in all these aspects, the professional consideration process related to human rights needs to be introduced in the process of textbook development.
Second, in making descriptions of the equality of the sexes in textbooks, many of contents are insufficient to human rights, therefore, we must prepare the alternatives which exclude these prejudices from the process of textbook development.
Third, because of purpose-oriented manners in constructing contents, texts which are insufficient to human rights show tendencies to increase.
Fourth, in constructing texts which are insufficient to human rights, its form is not the positive description but the negative exclusion.
Fifth, questions related to human rights appear more in illustrations than in texts.
For the human rights education in elementary social studies, we must prepare the process for considering textbooks in the view of human rights and the in-service training program for reconstructing contents related to human rights.