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Full-Text Articles in Education

“Pushing Past The Margins” With Micro-Content Analysis: A Tool To Identify Gender-Bias In Textbooks, Erica M. Southworth, Rebekah Cleaver, Haley Herbst Apr 2020

“Pushing Past The Margins” With Micro-Content Analysis: A Tool To Identify Gender-Bias In Textbooks, Erica M. Southworth, Rebekah Cleaver, Haley Herbst

Faculty Creative and Scholarly Works

We present Micro-content Analysis (MCA) as a tool for social studies educators to quickly review their current textbook and determine if it contains gender-biased content. Our MCA Guide and Toolkit retain traditional content analysis components in a compact manner to ensure that MCA is a time-efficient process for educators. We demonstrate how we implemented the Guide and Toolkit on a secondary world history textbook currently utilized in a Midwest high school. Our MCA Toolkit includes resources for locating information on female historical agents so educators can present gender-inclusive content to their students and rectify any gender-biased messages presented in textbooks.


Whose Story Is It, Now? Re-Examining Women’S Visibility In 21st Century Secondary World History Textbooks, Erica M. Southworth, Jenna Kempen, Melonie Zielinski Jul 2019

Whose Story Is It, Now? Re-Examining Women’S Visibility In 21st Century Secondary World History Textbooks, Erica M. Southworth, Jenna Kempen, Melonie Zielinski

Faculty Creative and Scholarly Works

In 2005 Clark, Ayton, Frechette, and Keller (2005) conducted a content analysis study on secondary world history textbooks to determine whether women’s inclusion had increased or decreased between 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s. They reported women’s severe marginalization in the texts even though the percentages of women’s inclusion had increased over the course of the decades. We conducted a replication study of the content analysis performed by Clark et al. from a feminist research lens and analyzed 2000 and 2010 editions of the same textbooks to determine if female inclusion had increased. Our findings revealed that very little to no progress …


On The (Male) Fringes: How Early Religious Women Remain “Subordinate” In World History Textbooks, Erica M. Southworth Jul 2018

On The (Male) Fringes: How Early Religious Women Remain “Subordinate” In World History Textbooks, Erica M. Southworth

Faculty Creative and Scholarly Works

Second Wave feminist researchers identified male-dominated curriculum formats in late twentieth century curriculum materials. This study builds off their work and advances the conversation of women’s inclusion by current United States secondary world history textbook content via a feminist lens to determine the extent of women’s agency in the accounts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The purpose was to determine if textbooks portrayed these patriarchal religions as exclusively male, thereby presenting inaccurate portrayals of the religions and the agents involved, which directly violates NCSS Standards. This study used critical discourse analysis to identify patterns of female marginalization and omission, indicating …