Calibrating the ‘right values’: the role of critical inquiry tasks in social studies textbooks

Abstract

The issue of how to represent a nation’s past in history textbooks has been the source of vigorous debate across a variety of educational contexts. Some textbooks have been criticized for their simplistic, nation-building stories and the meta-narrative of ‘progress’ they engender. While many contemporary textbooks include critical inquiry tasks for developing learners’ historical thinking skills, the extent to which they actually facilitate critical thinking is unclear. This article employs methods grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) for analyzing verbal and visual text to examine evaluative meaning in the core narrative and two critical inquiry tasks of a Canadian social studies textbook chapter. The findings show an uneasy coexistence between the aims of providing opportunities for critical engagement and communicating a cohesive story of the nation’s collective experiences. Rather than platforms for facilitating interpretive independence, the critical inquiry tasks appear to be spaces for drawing out or calibrating the ‘right values’ developed through the core narrative of the chapter.

Keywords

appraisal framework historical thinking skills history textbooks multimodality systemic functional linguistics (SFL)

Introduction

There has been much interest among systemic functional linguists (SFL) in how various ideological positions are communicated in social studies and history textbooks (e.g. Barnard, 2000, 2003; Coffin, 1997, 2006; Cullip, 2007; Eggins et al., 1993; Fitzgerald, 2014; Gu, 2014; Hashiba, 2010; Martin, 1993; Martin et al., 2010; Moss, 2010; Myskow, 2017, 2018; Oteiza, 2003; Unsworth, 1999; Veel and Coffin, 1996; Wignell, 1994). Studies have examined these books for a variety of language features, showing how interpersonal, ideational, and textual meanings position readers to take up particular views toward the past. Martin et al. (2010: 459) argue that history instruction goes beyond learning historical facts; it involves adopting ‘the right values’ toward the subject-matter, and ‘gain[ing] the cultivated gaze’. Myskow’s recent (in press) SFL study of interpersonal meaning in historical discourse offers a multi-level framework for investigating the evaluative language of history textbooks, showing how evaluations performed by various discourse participants collaborate to advance an official, sanctioned view toward the subject-matter.

The vast majority of such studies, however, have focused on verbal features of history textbooks. Their visual text – a modality that is becoming increasingly common as publishers rely more on photos and illustrations – has received far less attention (see Coffin and Derewianka, 2009; Derewianka and Coffin, 2008; and Oteiza and Pinuer, 2016, for notable exceptions). Moreover, studies up to now have dealt almost exclusively with the core narratives of textbooks. Pedagogically-oriented text, including critical inquiry tasks, which prompt learners to engage with material and set the interpretive parameters for evaluating past events, has been largely overlooked.

This article extends Myskow’s (in press) Levels of Evaluation framework, showing how it can be used to examine both the verbal and visual text in a Canadian secondary school social studies textbook (see Bowcher, 2012; Jewitt, 2009; Economou, 2008; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006; Painter et al., 2013, for SFL-based approaches to multimodal analysis). The discussion explores the ways these modalities interact throughout the core narrative of a chapter to position readers to take up particular viewpoints in the critical inquiry tasks. The article begins with a brief overview of the methods and materials used in the study. It then outlines the Levels of Evaluation framework, showing how Canada’s involvement in World War I is construed in the verbal and visual text of the chapter, before examining how readers are prompted to adopt, or calibrate the ‘right values’ in the chapter’s critical inquiry tasks.

Methods and Materials

The Levels of Evaluation framework provides a fine-grained, multi-perspective account of evaluative language in historical discourse. It brings together two prominent approaches to the study of evaluation: Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework; and Hunston’s (2000, 2011), Status, Value and Relevance. Drawing on the semantic categories outlined in Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework, Myskow (in press) groups evaluative acts into three levels: Inter-evaluative (those performed by historical actors); Super-evaluative (by the authorial voice); and Extra-evaluative (voices concerned with disciplinary engagement) (see Macken-Horarik, 2003, for the related concepts of inter- and super-subjectivity). Myskow shows that even in the absence of evaluations by the authorial voice (Super-evaluation), some perspectives of historical participants (Inter-evaluation) and other members of the history discipline (Extra-evaluation) may emerge from the cacophony of textual voices as preferred, or sanctioned views of the subject-matter.

Semantic categories of Martin and White’s (2005) framework used to examine evaluative acts at the first three levels of this framework are positive/negative loadings of Appreciation, Affect (Satisfaction, Happiness, Security, Inclination) and Judgment (Normality, Capacity, Tenacity, Veracity, Propriety). Following Myskow (in press), inscriptions of historical significance (major/minor) are denoted by high/low Significance and the Normality region of Judgment is elaborated further to include the subcategories Fortune (lucky, hapless) and Status (e.g. popular, strange). In accordance with Coffin’s (2006) work on Appraisal in historical discourse, overt inscriptions of Attitude categories are shown in bold and invoked tokens are in bold italics (see Martin and White, 2005: 67 for a discussion of different strategies for inscribing and invoking Attitude).

The fourth level of Myskow’s (in press) framework, meta-evaluation, is concerned with how the discourse itself is evaluated. This level, which adapts Hunston’s (2011) Status Value and Relevance approach for investigating evaluative meaning in scientific texts, explores the ways that a history text is ‘construed as exhibiting features of a “good work of history” (e.g., interesting; reasonable, balanced etc.)’ (Myskow, in press). Methods for analyzing levels of evaluation in visual texts are adapted from Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) and other SFL-based approaches for investigating interpersonal meaning in multimodal texts (e.g. Economou, 2008; Painter et al., 2013).

The material selected for analysis is a chapter titled Canada and the First World War from a ministry-approved Grade 11 social studies textbook (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 24–59) in the Canadian province of British Columbia (see Lévesque, 2005; Osborne, 2003; Sandwell, 2012; Seixas 2000, 2010, 2012, for a discussion of history education issues in Canada). The Great War (1914–1918) was thought to be a timely topic of investigation with the recent centennials marking its key events. Also, this war is considered an especially formative event in Canadian history, marking the country’s ‘coming of age’ as a modern, independent nation (see Berton, 1986; Woodcock, 1990). Some historians have argued that the war not only contributed to greater political autonomy from Britain but that it helped forge a sense of national identity with some going as far as to describe it as ‘Canada’s war of independence’ (Morton, 1999: 145). Not all agree with this uncomplicated nation-building story and the metanarrative of ‘progress’ that it engenders (see Francis, 1997: 126; Moss, 2001; Vance, 1997). According to Francis (1997: 126), in Canada ‘there has always been a counter narrative, muted but persistent, that found the appalling slaughter pointless, and the people who sanctioned it incompetent, even evil.’ Vance (1997: 266–267) argues that the upbeat view of the war as Canada’s coming of age was a myth that emerged to help Canadians cope with the horror of the war.

A stated goal of the textbook chapter examined here is to develop learners’ historical thinking skills. According to its back cover, there is ‘an emphasis on critical thinking’, which is informed by ‘the benchmarks of historical thinking’ (Cranny and Moles, 2010). These benchmarks are part of a non-profit Canadian educational initiative called the ‘Historical Thinking Project’, which, according to the project’s website, ‘was designed to foster a new approach to history education’ (see Seixas, 2010, and Sandwell, 2012, for an in-depth discussion of this project). The project identifies a number of ‘historical thinking concepts’ as central to history education including establishing historical significance, and analyzing cause and consequence. The introductory section of the textbook makes clear that each critical inquiry task in the book is based on one of these historical thinking concepts (Cranny and Moles, 2010: x–xi). Of the three critical inquiry tasks included in the chapter, the following two were selected for analysis in the present paper. (1) Cause and Consequence, dealing with the question of whether or not the Great War had a positive or negative effect on Canada; and (2) Historical Significance, which involves assessing the role of Aboriginal peoples and the First World War.

Levels of Evaluation in Verbal Text

For examining the viewpoint or ‘gaze’ (Martin et al., 2010) that readers are positioned to take up in response to the core narrative of the chapter, it is instructive to begin with the Super-evaluative level. Explicit and implicit evaluations of the authorial voice performed at this level are, at least for compliant readers, the most axiologically-charged types of appraisal, suggesting a high degree of reader–writer alignment (see Martin and White, 2005: 98–100, for a related discussion of bare, monoglossic statements).

Super-evaluative level

Table 1 categorizes all targets of Super-evaluative inscriptions of Judgment into nine groups, including Canadian servicemen, its subcategory aboriginal servicemen, as well as military leaders, and politicians. As Table 1 shows, aside from one Judgment of Canadian politicians, all positive Judgments are of Canadian military personnel (servicemen, aboriginal servicemen and military leaders). The overwhelming majority of these positive inscriptions are of Canadian servicemen who are evaluated for their Capacity (e.g. fought well) Normality (e.g. distinguished) and Tenacity (e.g. courageous).

This account of the Canadian military’s performance in the Great War provides the foundation from which a larger, nation-building meta-narrative is constructed – an upbeat story in which soldiers’ ‘success [+Capacity] gave them a sense of national pride [+Satisfaction]’ (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 38), and their growing ‘independence as a separate unit [from British forces] contributed greatly to a growing sense of national identity and autonomy’ (p. 33). The positive judgment of the Canadian military contrasts sharply with the negative judgments of the general category of military leaders, who ‘failed to understand [–Capacity] how the new technologies demanded new tactics’ and ‘stubbornly [–Tenacity] engaged in a war of attrition’ (p. 36). The abstract categories, Great Powers, are also judged negatively for ‘aggressively [–Tenacity] pursu[ing] their interests in Africa’ (p. 26).

This nation-building narrative proves rather flexible or ‘roomy’ as it is capable of accommodating another cherished aspect of Canadian national identity: multiculturalism. In the chapter examined here, Aboriginals who served in the war are, aside from Canadian servicemen and military leaders, the only other group with a comparatively high number of inscribed positive judgments at the Super-evaluative level (see Table 1). These judgments all celebrate Aboriginals’ war-related attributes, for example, steady nerves [+Tenacity] and excellent sharpshooters [+Capacity] (p. 48).

Canadian historiographer Peter Seixas (2000: 21) observes that the past 150 years of history in western Canada is traditionally told as ‘a progressive story of “Building the West”’ in which ‘white settlers become the central protagonists in developing the land, engineering technological progress and promoting economic growth’. As Seixas also points out, since around the mid-1970s these stories have been modified somewhat to include perspectives from groups such as non-British immigrants and women, who have been marginalized in traditional textbooks (p. 22). According to Seixas, such attempts at inclusion may ‘complicate the nation building story’, but ‘they do not necessarily upset it’ (p. 22). As an example, he shows how the scope of participants in the western Canadian narrative of progress has been expanded to include groups such as ‘Chinese workers on the Canadian Pacific Railroad’ (p. 22). Such attempts to include marginalized peoples into an existing metanarrative of progress is referred to in Seixas (2000: 21–22) as ‘enhancing collective memory’ or ‘the best story’ approach to history instruction.

The textbook chapter examined here exhibits a similar ‘best-story approach’ with respect to Aboriginal peoples’ contributions to the war. Sentence [1] construes a narrative conflict in which Aboriginal peoples overcome prejudice to join the Canadian forces:

[1] Initially, the Canadian forces did not accept Aboriginal peoples [Invoked –Fortune] and were reluctant to take African and Japanese Canadians. Volunteers from these groups managed to overcome [Invoked +Tenacity] such racist attitudes to join. (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 32)

This sentence [1] shows a simple story of progress in which the negative Fortune of Aboriginals for not being accepted to the Canadian forces because of racist attitudes is overcome through their positive Tenacity. Thus, Aboriginals are cast as protagonists in Canada’s nation-building narrative of WWI, though in a much less central role than the more general category of Canadian soldiers.

The term ‘contributionism’ has been used in African American history to describe approaches to historical representation that ‘[focus] on the productive endeavours of black people not only on their own behalf but also for the country at large, plac[ing] black people within the narrative of American nation building and achievement’ (Glazier, 2012: 21). The construal of Aboriginals’ achievements in association with the nation-building narrative of WWI suggests a similar contributionist approach to historical representation. Aboriginals are evaluated positively by virtue of their contributions to the Canadian military – and by implication, the advancement of the Canadian nation. Likewise, the contributions of women on the home front are also woven into this metanarrative of progress. Although, unlike their male counterparts, there are no overt positive judgments of women, their indispensability in the war is clearly marked by invoked judgments such as the following:

[2] ‘ Without women’s efforts on the home front [Invoked +Tenacity], Canada’s wartime economy would have collapsed.’ (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 47)

As this discussion shows, much can be gleaned about the official, sanctioned view toward the subject-matter by an analysis of Super-evaluative attitudinal inscriptions. The story of WWI presented here is one of the protagonists (Canadian servicemen together with their Aboriginal counterparts) forging a sense of collective Canadian pride and identity through their battlefield success. Although, as the next section shows, the chapter contains some negative evaluations of the war’s impact on Canadians, these evaluations are not typically performed at the Super-evaluative level of the authorial voice; they are attributed or ‘outsourced’ to historical participants at the Inter-evaluative level of the text.

Table 1.

Targets of inscribed positive and negative Judgment.

Evaluative target	Judgment
Evaluative target	Positive	Negative
Canadian servicemen	16	1
Canadian aboriginal servicemen	5	0
Canadian military leaders	5	0
Canadian politicians	1	0
Great powers	0	4
Military leaders	0	2
Germany	0	2
Canadian war administrators	0	1
Totals	27	10

Inter-evaluative level

If the war front is the place of pride and continuity, the home front is the place of regret and discontinuity. With the exception of women, who, as mentioned previously, are judged positively for their war-related work, the Canadian home front during WWI is construed as a place of conflict and division. But this counter-narrative is not generally developed at the Super-evaluative level, where appraisals of the subject-matter are performed by the authorial voice; instead, it is advanced at the Inter-evaluative level by the historical actors themselves who are bestowed with a voice to ‘speak’ their thoughts and feelings–perspectives that are knitted into the text vis-à-vis direct and indirect quotations and reports of their emotional state (Affect).

While Canadian soldiers are shown bravely fighting overseas as a united force, various groups of people in Canada fight amongst themselves, especially about the issue of conscription. The majority of French Canadians, for example, who, as the text explains, ‘did not feel a patriotic [–Happiness] connection to either Britain or France because their ancestors had come to Canada generations before’, were mostly opposed to the war, which ‘created tensions [–Security] with English Canadians, most of whom felt they owed Britain their allegiance’ (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 49). According to the text, there was also opposition to the war among Canadian workers, including farmers on the Prairies, who ‘needed [+Inclination] their sons to work the farm at home, not fight a war overseas’, and industrial workers who ‘ felt they were already contributing to the war effort [Invoked +Satisfaction] and did not want to [–Inclination] give up their jobs to fight in Europe’ (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 50).

As these examples show, rather than overtly judge historical actors on the home front, the authorial voice reports ‘their own’ thoughts and feelings about the war. Nevertheless, these Inter-evaluations still resonate at the Super-evaluative level of the text. The absence of a patriotic connection among French Canadians redounds as unusual or strange [–Status] at the sanctioned, Super-evaluative level, especially in light of the sacrifices made by Canadian soldiers in Europe. The farmers on the prairies, who needed their sons to work the farm at home fare somewhat better at the Super-evaluative level. They are judged for their negative Fortune (i.e. difficult situation). Thus, although there are no overt negative evaluations of any of these groups, when viewed in comparison with the brave sacrifices of Canadian soldiers and their unifying effect on Canadian identity, these historical actors who opposed the war are, at best, construed as unfortunate, and at worst, as somewhat petty and self-serving.

It is not surprising that negative construals of historical actors are generally avoided or limited to the Inter-evaluative level. Representing national groups and individuals negatively in textbooks can carry much risk (see Myskow, in press; Oteiza, 2003; Provenzo et al., 2011). But history textbooks do more than provide simplistic, feel-good stories about the past. As Tann (2010: 168) points out in his SFL analysis of Singaporean textbooks, there is a dual (and sometimes conflicting) function of history books to (1) ‘establish solidarity with protagonists in the story and see the story from their position’, and (2) ‘recognize these positions as “mistakes” through the “lessons” in the story’. The moral instructiveness of the WWI narrative presented here resides in the war-related accomplishments of the protagonists – Canadian soldiers, their leaders, and to a lesser extent, Aboriginals and women – juxtaposed against the forces of disunity and social upheaval on the homefront – that is, the ‘mistakes’ we are to learn from.

Extra-evaluative level

Compared with the Inter- and Super-evaluative levels, the Extra-evaluative level plays a much less prominent role in history textbooks (Myskow, in press). At this level, the authorial voice engages with alternative views toward the subject-matter ‘and in doing so takes up a more scholarly or disciplinary posture’. As many have pointed out, however, textbooks are not generally concerned with negotiating novel and potentially contentious new claims (e.g. Biber and Conrad, 2010; Hyland, 2005; Myers, 1992; Myskow, in press). They have been called ‘repositories of codified facts’ (Hyland, 2005: 101) and ‘consensus documents’ (Provenzo et al., 2011: 1) for their need to appeal to a broad and diverse readership. Nonetheless, extra-evaluation can be found in history textbooks in the form of direct and indirect quotations from other historians and in other, less obvious ways. The following example shows one, somewhat subtle, instance of extra-evaluation:

[3] Despite their heavy losses [Invoked –Fortune], Canadian troops distinguished [+Status] themselves during the Battle of the Somme and were brought in to lead assaults in several major [High Significance] battles over the course of the war. (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 38)

In this example, the Super-evaluative judgment that Canadian troops distinguished themselves in the Battle of the Somme is preceded by an acknowledgment of the view that they suffered heavy losses. However, this recognition is blunted somewhat by locating it in what Martin and White (2005: 124) refer to as the Concur element of a Concur–Counter pairing – a construction realized in [3] by the subordinating conjunction despite. Such formulations have been described elsewhere as concessions, which as Hunston (2000: 179–180) argues, share some similarity with attributions for the way in which ‘they are treated by the writer as though they have been uttered by a debating partner’. In Example [3], it is not the Extra-evaluative view of the ‘debating partner’ (i.e. that the Canadian troops suffered heavy losses) but the Judgment that they distinguished themselves on the battlefield that is sanctioned at the Super-evaluative level of the text – a view that is reinforced throughout the verbal text of the chapter by the numerous positive evaluations of their military accomplishments.

Levels of Evaluation in Visual Text

An analysis of the verbal text of the chapter provides only a partial view of its evaluative meanings. For a fuller description, it is necessary to look at the visual mode and how it works to advance the views expressed in the verbal text. As Jewitt (2009: 15) observes, ‘the meanings in any mode are always interwoven with the meanings made with those of all other modes co-present and co-operating in the communicative event’ (see Royce, 2007, for a related discussion of ‘intersemiotic complementarity’).

The use of Appraisal and Levels of Evaluation frameworks for analyzing visual images is complicated by several distinctive features of this medium. As Economou’s (2008) Appraisal study of news discourse shows, some Attitude resources are easier to identify in visual images than others. Economou points out that while Affect resources such as Happiness and Security can be inscribed in the facial expressions of visual participants, other subcategories of Attitude (Judgment and Appreciation) are not as clear-cut, observing that ‘only a few values can be unambiguously provoked visually, and for the most part these are of a fairly general nature’ (p. 259). This suggests that, while Affect values may be communicated by visual participants (e.g. historical actors represented in photographs) at the Inter-evaluative level, the judgments of them at the Super-evaluative level are not as discernible as they are in verbal text where the authorial voice may emerge to express its own views toward the subject-matter. As Painter et al. (2013: 18) put it, ‘the question of “who tells” is only relevant to verbal texts.’

It is possible, however, to view evaluative acts depicted in visual images as more or less sanctioned by the authorial voice in light of views put forward at the Super-evaluative level of the verbal text. Thus, when analyzing images at the Super-evaluative level, the concern is not with identifying inscriptions of Judgment or Appreciation, but with how evaluations at the Inter-evaluative level (by the historical participants) could be seen as sanctioned or at least in line with the views being advanced throughout the text as a whole. As pointed out previously, this movement of evaluative sourcing to different levels is accounted for in the framework by the notion of evaluative resonation. This concept is also useful for showing how attitudinal values treated at the Extra-evaluative level (i.e. the level concerned with the perspectives of other historians or interpreters of the past) may come to be sanctioned at the Super-evaluative level. Examples of visuals that are considered extra-evaluative include political cartoons, photographs/paintings of historians and images of their books, as well as depictions of memorials or monuments that commemorate people and events. The following discussion explores how attitudinal meanings in images at the Inter- and Extra-evaluative levels resonate at the Super-evaluative level, collaborating with the verbal text to advance particular views of the past. It looks in turn at visual images construing three groups: Canadian soldiers, Aboriginals, and conscientious objectors.

Canadian soldiers

As pointed out previously, Canadian soldiers are construed in the verbal text at the Super-evaluative level of the chapter as the main protagonists in Canada’s nation building story, propelling the narrative forward by their military victories and in doing so, forging a sense of national pride and identity. From the perspective of visual text, this theme is communicated perhaps most clearly by a large photograph (Figure 1) on the first page of the chapter that shows Canadian soldiers in the back of a military vehicle. Perhaps the most obvious Inter-evaluative feature of Figure 1 is the Affect resource Happiness inscribed in the smiles on the soldiers’ faces. Their raised arms seem to suggest either Happiness as they cheerfully greet onlookers or possibly Satisfaction as they extend their arms in a triumphant, celebratory gesture.

Figure 1.

First page of chapter showing Canadian soldiers in World War I (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 24). Reproduced with permission of Pearson Canada Inc. Photo Credit: WI Castle/Canada. Dept of National Defence/Library and archives Canada/PA-001332.

Painter et al. (2013: 16–17) point out that Affect can also be construed by the Proximity and Orientation of visual characters in relation to one another. Proximity refers to ‘the closeness or otherwise of the characters to each other in the image’, while Orientation ‘takes into account the bodily orientations of the depicted characters to each other’. The soldiers in Figure 1 are all in close proximity to one another, suggesting trust and comradery, and thus invoking the Affect resource positive Security. Moreover, they are all physically oriented in the same direction, suggesting collective purposefulness and unity, construing positive Inclination. These inscriptions of Affect resonate at the Super-evaluative level as positive Judgment. While the soldiers’ cheery, carefree disposition (Happiness) resonates as a judgment of positive Normality, their celebratory gesture (Satisfaction) suggests positive Capacity. Their collective purposefulness (Inclination) as well as their trust and confidence (Security) resonate as a positive Judgment of their Tenacity.

Further evidence for these Super-evaluative judgments can be found by using Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) methods for analysing the interactional elements of multimodal texts. The authors observe that a high/low camera angle can construe different power relations between viewers and participants (pp. 140–143). When participants are seen from below (low camera angle), they are shown as having power over the viewer and when they are seen from above (high camera angle), it is the viewer who is in a relative position of power. The photo of the soldiers in the military vehicle (Figure 1) is taken from a low camera angle, thus positioning the viewer to look up at them, emphasizing their importance and power (i.e. Capacity).

Kress and Van Leeuwen also point out that the direction of a participant’s gaze can enact different social relations with the viewer. Adopting Halliday’s (1985) terms, Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 117–118) describe the relation that is construed ‘when participants look directly at the viewer’s eyes’ as a ‘demand’ and when their gaze is directed elsewhere as an ‘offer’: a demand ‘creates a visual form of direct address’, while an offer construes the represented participants as ‘the objects of the viewer’s dispassionate scrutiny’ (pp. 117–119). The gazes of the soldiers in Figure 1 are directed at the viewer, providing maximum engagement and inviting us to share in their celebration. Thus, from the onset of the chapter, readers are invited into the world of the soldiers – the chief protagonists in Canada’s nation-building story. We are positioned to look up at them – a viewpoint that is reinforced throughout the verbal text of the core narrative by the various overt positive Judgments throughout the text.

Canadian soldiers’ contributions to the Great War are also construed in photographs of monuments that commemorate the war. As the subject-matter of these photos is not the historical actors themselves but interpretations of historical subject-matter (i.e. commemorations of their sacrifices), such images are treated at the Extra-evaluative level. Figure 2 shows the Canadian National Vimy Monument in France dedicated to the Canadian soldiers killed in the First World War. The low camera angle that positions viewers to look up at the towering monument suggests positive Appreciation. Since positive Appreciation of the monument is reinforced by the aforementioned positive Judgments of the Canadian servicemen in the verbal text, the positive view of the soldiers construed in the image of the Vimy Ridge Monument can be seen as projecting or resonating at the Super-evaluative level, and thus sanctioned by, or at least consistent with the views advanced elsewhere by the authorial voice of the text.

Figure 2.

Canadian National Vimy Monument. Credit: charistoone-travel/Alamy Stock Photo. Reproduced with permission from Alamy.

Conscientious objectors

The perspective of those who opposed the war is represented in the visual image in Figure 3, which, as the caption reads, depicts a plaque on the side of a stone dedicated to conscientious objectors. Like the Vimy Monument (Figure 2), this plaque construes an interpretation of the past rather than the past itself, and is thus treated here at the Extra-evaluative level as a positive evaluation by an unspecified interpreter of the past. However, the depiction of this monument contrasts sharply with the others in terms of the viewer relations it construes.

Figure 3.

Conscientious objectors’ commemorative monument. Credit: Roberto Herrett/Alamy Stock Photo. Reproduced with permission from Alamy.

Unlike the respect and awe invoked by the low camera angle in the depictions of the other monuments, the photo of the conscientious objectors’ monument is shot from above, positioning viewers to look down on it. It is also seen from an oblique angle suggesting an interpersonal distance; we are not positioned to align with it, but to observe it as something that ‘is not part of our world’ (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006: 136). The text in the accompanying caption associates the monument with Vietnam-era American draft-dodgers and deserters. Students’ reading of the bravery and sacrifice of Canadian soldiers – the key protagonists in their Canadian nation-building story – are strongly positioned by this image and its supporting text to negatively judge a conscientious objector as foreign, as not one of us (see Rigley, 1990: 172, for a related discussion of group identity in historical narratives). Unlike the positive views of Canadian soldiers construed in the Vimy and Aboriginal war monuments, which project positively onto the Super-evaluative level, the view depicted in the monument commemorating conscientious objectors is not sanctioned at the Super-evaluative level.

Critical Inquiry Tasks

Now that key evaluative themes of the chapter’s core narrative have been examined, the discussion turns to its critical thinking tasks and the issue of how perspectives developed throughout the chapter prime readers to take up particular viewpoints in response to these tasks. To assess this, it is first necessary to understand how the critical inquiry tasks themselves are represented in the text, especially the extent to which they are construed as providing a balanced, even-handed treatment of the subject-matter and opportunities for critical engagement. Of particular pertinence to this investigation is meta-evaluation – the region of the levels of evaluation framework concerned with how the discourse itself is evaluated. Adapting Hunston’s (2000, 2011) Status Value and Relevance framework for investigating evaluative acts in scientific texts, Myskow (in press) shows that there are underlying disciplinary goals for writers of history and when these goals are shown to have been met, there is an implicit positive evaluation of the discourse under construction.

Myskow proposes various value mnemonics such as Reasonableness, Balance, and Authority to denote key disciplinary goals of writers of history. Of particular relevance to the present study is the mnemonic Balance, which is concerned with ‘the extent to which the attributed voice contributes to a diversity of perspectives’. According to Myskow, this mnemonic accounts for ‘the tendency in contemporary history texts to integrate a multiplicity of perspectives toward the subject-matter’ (see also Seixas, 2000, for a discussion of this tendency in Canadian history education, and Novick, 1988: 469–521, for an in-depth examination of it in the broader historical profession).

Another mnemonic that is of use for examining history textbooks is Interpretive Autonomy. This mnemonic is not outlined in Myskow’s (in press) general discussion of value in historical discourse but is proposed here to account for the tendency in contemporary history textbooks to provide opportunities for learners to arrive at their own interpretations of the past. Critical inquiry tasks that delegate responsibility to learners to make up their own minds about the past may be viewed as more democratic than what Seixas (2000: 19) calls the simplistic narratives of ‘national cohesion’. Such tasks are also central to the skills-based pedagogies advocated by many history education specialists. The mnemonics of Balance and Autonomy, therefore, denote features that are highly valued in contemporary history textbooks, and thus the extent to which critical inquiry tasks incorporate them implies a positive evaluation of the discourse under construction.

Critical Inquiry Task 1: The effect of the war on Canada

Figure 4 shows a critical inquiry task titled Cause and Consequence. The verbal text in the title that asks learners whether or not WWI had a positive or negative effect on Canada indicates that they are to choose between two distinct views of the war, thus codifying the value mnemonics Balance and Autonomy. For examining how these features are construed in the visual text, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006: 201–204) concepts of ‘salience’, ‘framing’ and ‘color’ (225–238) were found to be particularly useful. The critical inquiry task on this page is made to stand out from the other pages in the chapter through the use of color. In contrast with the white background throughout the core text of the chapter, this page has a green-tinted background, which lends it, in Kress and Van Leeuwen’s words, a ‘visual weight’ (p. 202), suggesting critical inquiry (i.e. Interpretive Autonomy) is an important feature of these texts.

Figure 4.

Critical inquiry task examining impact of World War I on Canada (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 55). Reproduced with permission of Pearson Canada Inc.

A closer look at the visual and verbal sequencing of information in the task (Figure 4) reveal other techniques for construing Autonomy and Balance. Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006: 186–193) observe that the ordering of visual elements in terms of top and bottom of a composition can affect their information value. In advertising and marketing-oriented texts, for example, ‘the upper section visualizes the “promise” of the product’, the status or glamour it can bestow on its users’, while ‘the lower section visualizes the product itself, providing more or less factual information about it, and telling the readers or users where it can be obtained’ (p. 186). Of course the image examined here (Figure 4) is not from an advertising or marketing genre, but there are noticeable parallels in the ways some types of information are made more salient than others. In the top left of the page is the word ‘counterpoints’ (also the name of the textbook), which is strongly suggestive of the mnemonic Balance as readers are positioned to expect contrasting views toward the subject-matter. It is also the largest verbal text on the page and is made more salient by the contrasting dark green and white background. Thus, the information at the top of the page builds reader expectation, or in Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006: 186) terms, the ‘“promise” of the product’, which in this case is that learners are to consider contrasting views (Balance) to arrive at their own conclusions (Autonomy). The detailed information about this pedagogical ‘product’ and how it can be ‘obtained’ occupies the remainder of the page with a section on the bottom right (analyzing the issue) that details how to complete the task.

Despite this ‘promise’ of critical inquiry, much of the verbal text in the critical inquiry section is actually a condensed version or summary of the main points from the core narrative. Like the core narrative, the critical inquiry section (Figure 4) mentions positive effects of the war including ‘a sense of pride [+Satisfaction] and identity’ [+Security] as well as negative aspects such as ‘the bitterness [–Appreciation] of the debate’ between Anglophones and Francophones over the conscription issue and the increased discrimination against minorities (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 55). In contrast with the core narrative, however, the critical inquiry section also provides source material from two historians, George Woodcock and Jonathan Vance, who offer conflicting opinions on the positive/negative effects of the war. In Woodcock’s view, through the experience of the war ‘an identity in which the sense of being colonial … metamorphosed into a sense of being Canadian’ (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 55). Vance’s view, on the other hand, is a more controversial one that rejects the nation-building story altogether. As summarized by the author, Vance maintains that Canada’s ‘coming of age was a myth that developed during the 1920s and 1930s to transform the horrors of the war into a more positive experience’ (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 55).

A closer look at the surrounding text shows that only Woodcock’s view is sanctioned by the authorial voice. The war as nation-building story is not only developed throughout the core narrative of the chapter but is explicitly restated by the authorial voice in the critical inquiry section:

[4] The First World War marked Canada’s coming of age as it moved from a collection of disparate communities to a nation united by a sense of pride and identity. Canada gained international status [+Status] by participating at the Paris Peace Conference … (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 55)

As this excerpt makes clear, Vance’s rejection of the ‘coming of age’ view of the war as a myth is clearly not in line with the official view of the text – and thus, the authorial posture of neutrality and evenhandedness construed by the inclusion of these two distinct views is illusory. This is shown most clearly in the pedagogical tasks under the heading ‘analyzing the issue’ which follow the verbal text in the critical inquiry section (Figure 4). The first question in this section states: ‘Define “coming of age”. How did the First World War help bring about Canada’s “coming of age”?’ (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 55). It is unclear what ‘critical inquiry’ skill this question is intended to elicit. The framing of it clearly does not allow for the option that it was not a ‘coming of age’, and since the answer to this question can be located in the passage, it is better understood as a comprehension question rather than a critical inquiry task.

The third question in this section is more open-ended and addresses the two competing views of Vance and Woodcock. However, rather than have learners decide which one they side with, they are directed to engage in a debate where one student defends Vance’s view, and the other takes up Woodcock’s position. Since Vance’s notion of ‘maturity myth’ has not been developed in the text, it is unclear how learners are to meaningfully defend this position. Its inclusion in the chapter seems to serve a meta-evaluative function – to show that the text offers a balanced perspective – rather than a pedagogical one, to provide a meaningful opportunity for critical engagement.

These findings are consistent with Nagel and Woodward’s (1992) study that examines changes in social studies textbooks from one publication date to the next. The authors show that many questions aimed at developing historical skills could be more aptly referred to as ‘reading for answers’ (p. 6), since the information required to complete these tasks is contained in the reading passage. They refer to these misrepresented or omitted tasks as ‘phantom skills’ and conclude that the changes made by publishers from one publication date to the next are more cosmetic than substantive. The present study’s analysis of meta-evaluation suggests that ‘the promise’ of critical inquiry in the textbook examined here is also illusory or ‘cosmetic’ with the authorial voice building up a particular sanctioned view of the past that is drawn out or calibrated in the critical inquiry task.

Critical Inquiry Task 2: Aboriginal Peoples and the First World War

Another critical inquiry section in this chapter that does not appear to deliver on the ‘promise’ of Autonomy and Balance developed in the orientation to the task is titled Aboriginal Peoples and the First World War. As the visual layout of this section is similar to that of the other critical inquiry section shown in Figure 4, it is not reproduced here. Like the previously examined critical inquiry task in Figure 4, this task is set off from the core narrative as a separate page that is made more salient through the use of a color-tinted background. However, unlike the other critical inquiry task that deals with cause and consequence, this one specifies significance as the historical skill of focus and asks at the top of the page: ‘What challenges did Aboriginal soldiers face during the war?’. As discussed previously, the significance of Aboriginal peoples’ contributions to the war is already made apparent in the core narrative of the chapter and the adversity they faced is also highlighted by how they ‘ managed to overcome [Invoked +Tenacity] … racist attitudes to join [the military]’ (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 32). Like the critical inquiry task examined in the previous section, this one serves to emphasize key points from the core narrative as the following excerpt from the critical inquiry section shows:

[5] Canada’s Aboriginal peoples contributed greatly [+Tenacity] to the war effort, both by giving money [Invoked +Propriety] to the cause and by volunteering [Invoked +Propriety] for the armed forces. (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 48)

An analysis of the pedagogical tasks under the heading ‘Looking Further’ at the bottom of the page also reveals that the expectation for critical inquiry at the top of the page is clearly not met.

[6] 1) What motivated Aboriginal peoples to enlist in the First World War?

2) What qualities helped them to excel on the battlefield?

3) Do you think Aboriginal peoples’ contribution to the war effort would have been featured in a textbook 50 years ago? Why or why not?

(Cranny and Moles, 2010: 48)

The answers to the questions in [6] regarding the motivation of Aboriginals to enlist in the First World War (1) and the qualities that helped them to excel on the battlefield (2) are provided in the critical-inquiry reading passage, and thus are better categorized as reading comprehension questions. The question that asks if learners think Aboriginal peoples’ contribution to the war effort would have been featured in a textbook 50 years ago (3) seems to elicit a more opinion-ended response. However, at best this is an inference question, which also clearly has a ‘correct’ answer. By reading the passage and learning how Aboriginals were discriminated against 50 years ago, learners can infer that they probably would not have been featured in a textbook at that time. Thus, it is unclear how this activity fosters learners’ ability to perform assessments of historical significance. In a discussion of teaching historical significance in the secondary school context, Hunt (2000: 52) states the following:

The consideration of significance promotes not only the ability to explain and support a case, but also encourages teenagers to consider where they stand on some of the significant and enduring issues that arise from the study of people in the past.

There is little doubt in the critical inquiry task examined here where learners are ‘to stand’ on the significance of Aboriginals’ contribution to WWI and the adversity they faced; they are instructed by both the core text and the content of the critical inquiry task to regard it as significant. Of course, the point of this discussion is not to question the choice to make Aboriginal peoples’ experience in the war a focal point of the chapter. What is interesting about both of the tasks examined here is that they seem to meld together two competing rhetorical aims of summarizing the official view of the core narrative developed in the chapter and providing opportunities for learners to engage in a critical examination of the material.

One way that this task could be modified to elicit an assessment of historical significance is to frame prompts in terms of probability or degree (see Coffin, 2006: 78). Instead of asking what challenges Aboriginals faced during the war, the prompt could read: ‘To what extent were Aboriginal communities impacted by the war?’ Not only would this require learners to perform an actual assessment of historical significance (e.g. considerable/little impact), but it would provide an opportunity for a more in-depth consideration of the issue. Learners may conclude, for example, that ‘the more than 4000 people [who] volunteered for service’ must have had a significant negative short-term effect on communities, while the disappointment of ‘the Aboriginal leaders who hoped their people’s contributions to the war would ensure them a better situation’ suggests the war’s long-term positive impact was negligible (Cranny and Moles, 2010: 48, 55).

Another possibility is to include critical inquiry source texts that are less overtly evaluative. In a recent SFL study of the factors that promote argumentative writing in history, Miller et al. (2016: 21) found that source texts that facilitate knowledge-transformation rather than knowledge-telling avoid ‘overarching claim[s] and explicit argument’ because such features prompt learners to ‘simply re-tell the source text author’s point of view’. As the findings from the present study show, critical inquiry source texts are rich in evaluative language that makes explicit key points in the core narrative. Thus, learners are left with little choice but to recount the Super-evaluative views, or the ‘right values’, advanced by the authorial voice.

The same observation applies for visual text. Highly emotive images that position readers to empathize or align with particular groups of historical actors will affect how learners respond to critical inquiry tasks. Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006: 121) research on textbooks shows that, as learners reach higher levels of education, ‘illustrations that served to involve students emotively in the subject matter … gradually drop out’ and are replaced with more ‘objective’ images such as ‘diagrams maps and charts’ (see also Derewianka and Coffin, 2008, for an analysis of different types of images in history textbooks). Although the textbook examined here is for senior high school (Grade 11), the chapter relies mainly on concrete representations of reality.

In an SFL analysis of the multi-modal layout of a chapter from a British history textbook on WWI, Coffin and Derewianka (2009: 211) found that there was ‘a relatively narrow [reading] pathway through the chapter leading to a particular interpretation of events’. In the chapter examined here, the critical inquiry sections could be seen as destinations of the sanctioned pathway through the core narrative of the text – the terminal locations where the key points of it are summarized and less important ones are left out. From an SFL genre perspective, the critical inquiry sections could be seen as macro-level ‘deduction stages’, which, as described by Coffin (2006: 62), are typically found at the end of recount genres and functions to ‘draw out historical significance of the events recorded’ (see also Christie and Derewianka, 2008).

Conclusion

The levels of evaluation framework provide a fine-grained analysis of both verbal and visual text, showing how learners are positioned to take up particular views not only toward the subject-matter but the pedagogical tasks they perform. As the present study examines only a single chapter of a ministry-approved textbook, no general claims are made here about history textbooks in Canada or other educational contexts. However, the findings serve as a cautionary reminder for materials developers and history teachers of how the divergent aims of history textbooks to foster a sense of collective (national) group identity and develop historical thinking skills can have an uneasy coexistence.

The discussion shows that the critical inquiry tasks examined here appear to conflate two distinct rhetorical functions: (1) to summarize or draw attention to key points of the historical narrative, and (2) to engage learners in a critical exploration of the material. While the core narrative advances a mostly uncomplicated nation-building story – the key themes of which are summarized in the verbal text of the critical inquiry tasks, meta-evaluative features of the critical inquiry tasks imply a disinterested, impartial pedagogical space where learners are to exercise their interpretive autonomy to arrive at ‘their own’ conclusions about the subject-matter. In some instances, the material included in the critical inquiry tasks was found to be even more attitudinally charged than that in the core narrative, thus performing the role of a ‘deduction stage’ in the historical recount genre (see Coffin, 2006: 62). Therefore, despite the appearance of dispassionate evenhandedness and interpretive autonomy construed in the critical inquiry sections, a close analysis shows that, at least for compliant readers, there is actually a very limited choice of perspectives to be taken up on the issues raised in the text. It was suggested that these critical inquiry sections are better understood as reading comprehension exercises, or places for ‘calibrating the right values’ developed throughout the core narrative of the text.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors and there is no conflict of interest.

Biographical Note

GORDON MYSKOW is Visiting Assistant Professor at Keio University Department of Law and Political Science where he teaches content-based courses on socio-political history to second language learners. He also teaches masters-level courses in TESOL, and is advisor to the United Nations Association Test of English in Japan. He obtained his PhD in Applied Linguistics from University of Birmingham (UK) and his MA in TESOL from Teachers College, Columbia University. His current research interests are in CLIL and the language of historical subject-matter.

Address: Department of Law and Political Science, Keio University. 4-1-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku Ward, Yokohama, Kanagawa 2238521 Japan. [email: gmyskow@gmail.com]

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