A comparison study of the rural and urban students' perspectives: Is the politics textbook related to their daily life?

This comparison study aims to identify the differences (or similarities) between the urban and the rural students’ perspectives on the textbook Politics and Life about whether the textbook is related to their daily life and find out the reasons for explaining the differences (or similarities). The survey as well the interview of this study were conducted respectively in an urban school and a rural school of Guangxi, China. A total of 579 Year-one students (287 urban students and 292 rural students) and 10 teachers (5 teachers of each school) were involved. Results indicated that there are significant differences in the students’ perspectives of the textbook Politics and Life between two schools, and on the urban students’ perspectives the textbook was more ‘liferelated’. Also, this study provided a new framework to probe the ‘life-related’ of the textbook from students’ perspectives. By using this framework, the factors leading to the differences between two schools were abstracted as the two sides of the interactive process (the source and the practicality) between the living environment (includes the public resources and family background) and the textbook contents (includes the Texts, Images, Cases, and Activities). This study suggested that the textbook editing committee should consider the gaps between the urban and the rural when designing the textbook. Copyright © 2017 The Education University of Hong Kong.