PDF (Whole Thesis) - USQ ePrints - University of Southern ...

stories by authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens,
although part of the British canon of literature; where narratives are not specifically related to
representations within Australian history, they are not added. In general, Readers for older
grades have more evidence of British heritages than younger grades (and rarely Indigenous
representations for any age group). This is due to younger grades concentrating on personal
moral values such as honesty, friendship and respect for elders such as through obeying
parents; and through narratives of the natural world, such as stories and illustrations of
Australian birds and mammals; rather than a discipline-focused approach to learning, which
is more evident from the middle to upper primary years. Overall, representations of
Indigenous Australians are not included in any depth, with only an occasional mention and
rarely as the main topic of the narrative; with a significant exception to this being the story
The Last of His Tribe (Department of Public Instruction, 1936, pp. 168-169).
Like other series of textbooks (see for example Social Studies for Queensland schools series
analysed in Chapter 6: Black Movement in Australia 1964-1975), Readers build on each
other in a curriculum progression, so that the same content is not covered across multiple
school years, providing a continuity of curriculum for the school students, as explained in the
preface of Queensland school readers: Book 1 (see Source 4.1).
Source 4.1. Preface of Queensland school readers: Book 1(Department of
Public Instruction, 1933, p. iii)
4.2.3 Categories and discourses within their historical context.
The categories and discourses emerging from analysis are presented as neither falsities nor
truth claims, neither are they intended to de-legitimise any individual or group contribution to
Australia’s national history. Apropos, a ‘cultural self-loathing’ mentality is avoided whereby
anything positive a group has achieved is wiped out by negative actions. Instead, by enabling
the findings to emerge from the data, a more complex knowledge is able to be gained of the
representations of the two exemplar topics and the discourses that emerge from them. Even
though the content knowledge communicated through textbooks may be done through a
discourse of certainties and ‘absolutes’, as an all-encompassing knowledge font; by
investigating textbooks from a number of eras, it can be seen that the notion of a group or
event being represented as unchanging is clearly refuted. Instead, it becomes apparent that
142