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Chapter Eight: Conclusion
8.1 Introduction
The three eras selected for analysis each demonstrate a period of rapid social change,
significant for quite divergent reasons, but with the common thread that they have each made
a significant contribution to Australia’s history, and in terms of national identity, continue to
do so. They have each been examined through a selected exemplar topic: British heritages in
the case of the WWI era; Indigenous representations in the 1964-1975 era; and both British
heritages and Indigenous representations in the 1988 Bicentennial era. Textbooks from each
of these periods approach national history to varying degrees of difference, and it is through
the analysis conducted that conclusions are able to be made about the curriculum approach to
history that school students have been expected to learn.
A potential limitation of this project is that although the representations of British heritages
and Indigenous Australians, as they occur in History textbooks has been identified, their
immediate and long lasting impact on school students has not been able to be established.
Additionally, whilst this project has not looked at the changing pedagogical trends nor given
consideration to the change in psychological or sociological approaches to teaching school
students across the eras studied, particularly from the early 1970s onwards, it nevertheless
has significant value as it has tracked, through curriculum content, the changing
representations within this subject area. What this offers as an area of original contribution to
the study of textbooks and curriculum generally is an awareness raising of the political nature
of curriculum in schools, regardless of how neutral it purports to be through language
features used to communicate knowledge. This then has relevance to current debates about
education and curriculum where increasingly government interest and policy making is
shaping the content of school curriculum. This is especially the case in Australia through the
proposed implementation of the national curriculum, which has plans to extend more
rigorously into assessment practices, including external examinations for primary
(elementary) and high school students.
8.2 Final Stage Analysis: Obstacles to be Tackled
This chapter now turns to conduct the final stage of the analysis, articulated through
Fairclough’s stages four “identify possible ways past the obstacles” and five “reflect critically
on the analysis” (Fairclough, 2001, p. 124). It does so by identifying and discussing the
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