ABSTRACT

This book examines both history textbook controversies AND teaching historical controversy in Asian contexts. The different perspectives provided by the book’s authors offer numerous insights, examples, and approaches for understanding historical controversy to provide a practical gold mine for scholars and practitioners. The book provides case studies of history textbook controversies ranging from treatments of the Nanjing Massacre to a comparative treatment of Japanese occupation in Vietnamese and Singaporean textbooks to the differences in history textbooks published by secular and Hindu nationalist governments in India. It also offers a range of approaches for teaching historical controversy in classrooms. These include Structured Academic Controversy, the use of Japanese manga, teaching controversy through case studies, student facilitated discussion processes, and discipline-based approaches that can be used in history classrooms. The book’s chapters will help educational researchers and curricularists consider new approaches for curriculum design, curriculum study, and classroom research.

part I|37 pages

Settings

chapter 1|16 pages

Introduction

Controversy, history and history education in Asia

chapter 2|19 pages

Teaching controversial issues in the classroom

The exciting potential of disciplinary history

part II|124 pages

Controversies in history textbooks

chapter 3|17 pages

The battle over the memory of the nation

Whose national history?

chapter 4|17 pages

The other side of silence

Religion and conflict in Indian textbooks

chapter 5|17 pages

How can we teach the old foe's wounds?

Analysis of descriptions of the Japanese occupation and the atomic bombs in Vietnamese and Singaporean textbooks

chapter 6|17 pages

Constructing the nation

Portrayals of national identity in Singapore's school textbook narratives of the Japanese Occupation 1

chapter 7|14 pages

Japanese history textbooks and the Asia-Pacific War

Apportioning blame 1

chapter 9|23 pages

Between remembering and protecting

Introduction of cultural heritage into Singapore's Primary Social Studies Syllabus 2012 1

part III|102 pages

Teaching historical controversy