Abstract:
This article focuses on the analysis of three textbooks that are based on the
Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), a revised curriculum from the
National Curriculum Statement which was implemented in 2008. The article uses
one element of a historical thinking framework, the analysis of primary sources, to
evaluate the textbooks. In the analysis of primary sources the three heuristics distilled
by Wineburg (2001) such as sourcing, corroborating and contextualizing are used
to evaluate the utilisation of the primary sources in the three textbooks. According
to the findings of this article, the writing of the three textbooks is still framed in
an outdated mode of textbooks’ writing in a dominant narrative style, influenced
by Ranke’s scientific paradigm or realism. The three textbooks have many primary
sources that are poorly contextualized and which inhibit the implementation of
sourcing, corroborating and contextualizing heuristics. Although, some primary
sources are contextualized, source-based questions are not reflecting most of the
elements of sourcing, corroborating and contextualizing heuristics. Instead, they
are mostly focused on the information on the source which is influenced by the
authors’ conventional epistemological beliefs about school history as a compendium
of facts. This poor contextualization of sources impacted negatively on the analysis
of primary sources by learners as part and parcel of “doing history” in the classroom.
