2015 Volume 67 Issue 4 Pages 306-321
The aim of this study was to verify the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the normal school geography textbooks as compared to those used in middle schools.
The study examined geography textbooks from 1910 and 1937 and reached the following conclusions:
1. From inspection of the contents of geography textbooks used in normal school and middle school in the late Meiji and the early Showa periods, I found out that middle school textbooks were not always more voluminous and deeper than normal school textbooks. This fact suggests that the status of the normal schools improved only gradually. In other words, the growing sophistication of normal schools led to a relative decline in middle school textbook superiority, and raised the level of normal school textbooks.
2. In textbooks for normal schools, there were almost no geographical teaching methods presented that would be useful for teachers in the future. But there were some textbooks which contained teaching methods and decrees concerned with education.
One can say that there were authors who recognized the importance of relating teaching methods. This continues to be a problem in today’s teacher education.
The present work failed to consider geographical teaching methods in detail and this should be examined in another paper.
