Current Research @ - Full Citation and Abstract


	Illinois State University

AAT 9924340

The development of a content analysis instrument for analyzing college-level textbooks used in the United States to teach about the Middle East

Al-Bataineh, Adel Tawfig

ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY

EdD

1998

Lorber, Michael A.

DAI-A 60/04, p. 992, Oct 1999

0-599-23927-1

120

EDUCATION, CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION (0727); HISTORY, MIDDLE EASTERN (0333); ECONOMICS, HISTORY (0509); EDUCATION, SOCIAL SCIENCES (0534)

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The Middle East has long been, and continues to be, politically one of the world's hot spots. Helping students to learn about this area seems to make good sense and many colleges and universities offer courses to this end. This researcher was interested in seeing if content analysis instruments were available which would help educators select textbooks that dealt with the Middle East and which, at the same time, reflected the goals and standards published by UNESCO and the Councils for Social Studies, Geography, and World History. The researcher could find no such instruments and elected to conduct the research necessary to construct one. The researcher first examined the sets of goals and standards published by all four organizations to see which, if any, goals or standards were essentially the same. Fifty-five goals and standards were so identified. After analyzing the content of these items the researcher created four categories: (a) History; (b) Geography and Environment; (c) Culture; (d) Peace, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism, and arranged the goals and standards into the appropriate categories. The researcher then asked over sixty college-level faculty and specialists in Middle East history to rank-order the 55 goals and standards in terms of how important they thought the items were with respect to inclusion in college-level textbooks that deal with the Middle East. The rating scale had five categories: (1) Not Important, (2) Not Very Important, (3) Important, (4) Somewhat Important, and (5) Very Important. There also was a space for each participant to write in any objectives, skills or understandings that they believed were crucial, but which were not on the form. The researcher analyzed the 60 instruments that were returned, and calculated the mean and standard deviation for each item and each category. The items were then rank-ordered from high mean to low and from low standard deviation to high within each category. These rankings were then used to generate a second instrument. The second instrument included the 50 items that had the highest means and lowest standard deviations on the first instrument. The second instrument was sent out to the participants. They were asked to again rate each item. The researcher then calculated the means and standard deviations for the 60 second instruments that were returned. Each item and each category were again ranked-ordered from high mean to low and from low standard deviation to high. Based on this research the following findings emerged: (1) There was a need for a content analysis instrument which would help educators select textbooks that dealt with the Middle East and which, at the same time, reflected the goals and standards published by UNESCO and the Councils for Social Studies, Geography, and World History. (2) There is some agreement among organizations such as UNESCO and the Councils for Social Studies, Geography, and World History, and specialists who teach about the Middle East with respect to what students who are learning about the Middle East need to know and be able to do. (3) There was an agreement among the survey participants about the importance of the four categories, which were used by the researcher to classify the standards and objectives. (4) The items on the content analysis instrument seem to adequately reflect what students should know about the Middle East because faculty and specialists who evaluated the instrument suggested no additional objectives and standards. (5) The high degree of agreement between the ratings and standard deviation on the two instruments reflects a high degree of instrument reliability.