An analysis of immigration education in civics textbooks, 1920-1955.

The study examined by means of a content analysis the development of the treatment of immigration education in civics textbooks used in United States junior high school classrooms in two different time periods in the twentieth century. The two time periods were designated as Era 1 (1920s-early 1930s) and Era 2 (1940s-early 1950s). The major hypothesis for the study asserted that reform in the social studies for the early 1940s focused on international and intercultural education, and those reforms became evident in civics textbooks used in the 1950s. The study dealt with one subset of international and intercultural education, immigration education, and analyzed each element (sentence and question) in each textbook which dealt with that topic. Employing the theory of information integration, the variables of Era, Evaluative Load, Supportive Evidence, Type of Content, and Kind of Material were used to analyze each element dealing with immigration. The study used textbooks from five major urban school districts and included all the civics textbooks on the approved and recommended textbook listings for each city in the early 1930s and early 1950s for a total of 77 textbooks. All of the variables in the study were subject to a full factorial analysis utilizing a 3 x 2 x 6 x 2 x 2 design. Results of the study showed a 25 percent decline from Era 1 to Era 2 in the quantity of text coverage of immigration education. Significant differences were noted in both the Evaluative Load and the Supportive Evidence indicating that the text material was more factual and favorable toward immigrants and the immigration process in the second era. In addition, the textbook coverage of blacks and Orientals occupied a greater percentage of the total text coverage of immigration in the second era than in the first. The study concluded that reform efforts in the social studies in the 1940s on the part of both public and private educational organizations were reflected in textbook coverage of immigrants and the immigration process.PhDSocial sciences educationUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/161831/1/8812938.pd