How Is Reliability Useful? Collaboration in Social Studies Textbook Research

نویسندگان

1 Faculty of Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

2 Post-doctoral fellow at Education University of Hong Kong

3 Assistant Professor at the Department of Education Policy and Leadership (EPL) at the Education University of Hong Kong

doi
10.22034/jpiut.2025.21114
چکیده

Experience and subjectivity influence how texts are read, with reading involving “filling in the blanks”. This impacts the usefulness of intercoder reliability exercises in collaborative textbook analysis. Specifically, scholars’ individual backgrounds limit possibilities for substantive and meaningful intercoder reliability, particularly in international, cross-cultural, and multicultural settings. In this case, reliability is a problematic goal in textbook content analysis, possibly precluding substantive recognition of reader subjectivity—of researchers as well as students and teachers. In contrast, we argue that collaboration in textbook research can reveal the multifaceted nature of texts and generate multi-perspectival interpretations which are more meaningful in diverse contexts.