Comparing High School and College U.S. History Textbooks: What are we Missing?

Abstract

College-level history professors have noted that students are lacking a fundamental understanding of historical events and concepts. This study posits that the quality of textbooks used in high schools negatively impacts the learning experience of students and seeks to determine the validity of this notion. This study performs a content analysis of a high school level and intermediate high school to college-level textbook’s excerpts on the events leading up to the American Revolution to determine what events each text focuses on, the level of detail each work goes into, and what content, if any, is missing. The study finds that the high school level text does miss out on some key events while glossing over others to perhaps deliver a broader, surface-level understanding of content.