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variety of sources so that many different viewpoints can be considered” (Marsh, 2008, p.
226). Issitt claims that a strength of textbooks is the “...mix of sources including the
configuration of dominant ideas and social values” (2004, p. 685) that forms their content.
Apple who does not always consider that this is a strength, reports that what is included in
textbooks endorsed either officially or unofficially can be related to the power relations
which constructed them, writing:
It is important to realize, then, that controversies over “official knowledge” that
usually center around what is included and excluded in textbooks really signify more
profound political, economic and cultural relations and histories. Conflicts over texts
are often proxies for wider questions of power and relations (2000, p. 46).
Seeing ideology as “a system of beliefs by which we make sense of the world” (Stephens as
cited in Pinsent, 1997, p. 1) textbooks portray specific ideological understandings through
their content, which although cannot always be viewed as negative need nevertheless to be
critiqued and understood. Three types of ideologies are defined by Hollindale as being
present in school textbooks being: overt, implicit and inherent are defined below.
The writer’s ideology may appear overtly in the text, revealing what he or she
believes; this is often the case in books published in earlier periods. More frequently
today, ideology is implicit, in the form of unexamined assumptions; if readers share
these assumptions, they may find this kind of ideology almost imperceptible.
Hollindale also identifies ideology as being inherent within language itself. (Pinsent,
1997, p. 1)
Although textbooks are not, per se, generally considered literary texts, their widespread and
consistent use in classrooms lead them to be considered as such for the purposes of this
project. Aimed at school students, who are generally in their formative and highly
impressionable years, they can be viewed in similar ways to the perspective of children’s
picture books, expressed by Nodelman as: “…expressions of the values and assumptions of a
culture and a significant way of embedding readers in those values and assumptions—
persuading them that they are in fact the reader that the texts imply” (as cited in Manuel,
2009, p. 95). How these ideologies are evident in Queensland textbooks are explored
throughout the data analysis chapters.
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