Abstract
The “Morality and Society” unit within elementary school social studies classes, is an important part of the Quality Education Reform in China. The purpose of this paper is to compare and analyze the characteristics on the unit lesson reform in the three national social studies textbooks and teacher guidebooks in China. The following lists the findings of this study. 1) The purpose of establishing “Morality and Society” as a new subject in the elementary school social studies curriculum appears to be to train students to recognize their position in society. 2) There are three types of textbooks: a) morality oriented type, b) social recognition oriented type and c) the blended type of morality and social recognition. 3) An important common characteristic of three teacher guidebooks is the idea of developing citizenship through social problem-solving learning.
