History textbooks in Serbia after 2000: Signs of educational change?

In this study history textbooks in Serbia published after 2000 (in the post- Milošević period) are analyzed from a pedagogical perspective. The analysis focuses on five aspects of textbooks: the structure of units, features of the author’s text, the use of sources, types of tasks and activities as well as the role of visuals. Two generations of post-2000 textbooks for secondary school are examined: 1) textbooks first published in the late 1980s and revised after 2000 and 2) textbooks first published after 2000. Innovations can be found at three levels: First, improvements on the level of graphic design and appearance of textbooks, reflecting the publishers’ decisions rather than changing assumptions about education, are present in all textbooks. Second, pedagogical innovations such as varied unit structure, treatment of sources and visuals as learning opportunities and inclusion of a range of tasks are present in the textbooks of the new generation but not in the revised editions of the earlier generation. And finally, changes in the discourse of textbooks are present only partly in one of the textbooks from the new generation. The implications of the findings are discussed in view of the larger educational and social context.