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matter in a fresh and interesting way and to develop, both directly and indirectly, a
love of reading and inquiry.
The books have been well received by children, teachers and the public and
reflect credit on the teacher-compilers and the staff of the Government Printing
Office. (Department of Public Instruction, 1955, p. 29)
Australia’s Heritage a textbook for secondary school students was first published at the
beginning of the era in 1964 and the second edition in 1970. This textbook was written by
Queensland based authors Sparkes et al. (1964; 1970), respected educators active in the
Queensland History Teachers’ Association, syllabus committees and other curriculum bodies.
This textbook provides an opportunity for comparison of curriculum content relating to
Indigenous representations.
Arguably the most prolific textbook writer of textbooks for Queensland schools over the past
four decades (and significant contributor to Queensland and Australia’s history teaching
community in a range of areas including curriculum content, pedagogy and establishing
teacher networks), H.R. Cowie began his authorship of textbooks in the late 1960s. Four of
the textbooks Cowie contributed to are included for analysis, all aimed at high school
students from first year to senior high school. Those four textbooks include Challenge and
response: A history of the modern world volume 1 (Allsopp & Cowie, 1969); Challenge and
response: A history of the modern world volume 2 (Allsopp & Cowie, 1976); Frankfurt to
Fra Mauro (Cowie, 1975); and Foundations (Hendy, Lipke, Deoki, Ramsay, Davidson,
Mulcahy, & Cowie, 1976).
Other textbooks are also used for this era, with those listed above comprising the significant
texts, published by Queensland-based authors. Given the wide range of textbooks available
for this analysis, a thorough and systematic process has had to be applied to ensure a
representative sample from the over 50 textbooks that were known to be published, and used
in schools, between the mid 1950s to late 1970s was distilled. In particular, in order to
demonstrate any change in textbooks, it has been necessary to ensure that textbooks were
representative from across the era. The process for selecting textbooks for analysis outlined in
Chapter 3: Methodology, Research Design and Conduct has been applied rigorously to this
era. Textbooks that were eliminated during this process of selection are those that were not in
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