Sites of Knowledge, Sites of Power in Secondary School Textbooks (Philosophy, History, Islamic Studies, French Language)

The textbook constitutes a key instrument in shaping the educational process, occupying a central position within pedagogical and academic concerns. It provides a primary entry point for examining the educational system and analysing its fundamental components. Through the knowledge and disciplines it transmits, it reflects the system’s social philosophy, aims, and objectives, while also embodying a coherent social and cultural vision that contributes to the socialisation of younger generations and to the construction of representations of national identity in light of modern developments and the demands of globalisation.

In the context of ongoing global transformations—particularly those affecting teaching methodologies, which evolve alongside societal and scientific change and in response to the lived realities of contemporary life—it has become necessary to recalibrate the educational process. From this perspective, education is required to guide learners towards the acquisition of skills enabling them to address the problems they encounter in everyday life. Such a process is overseen by institutions variously described as political or social institutions, ultimately under the authority of the state.

Accordingly, the problematic underpinning our project converges on both the school institution and the textbook, which may be regarded as sites of knowledge and sites of power. This dual dimension becomes discernible in school discourse, particularly through curricula and prescribed textbooks, in relation to the broader issue of the relationship between the cognitive and the ideological.

Studies devoted to textbooks—across different levels and subjects—are marked by both qualitative richness and methodological diversity. They generally foreground educational pedagogy, while also incorporating sociological and psychological frameworks that define the theoretical and analytical horizons of educational practice. However, these pedagogical and disciplinary approaches do not constitute the central concern of our project. Rather, our intervention focuses primarily on the discourse of the textbook as situated between the cognitive and the ideological.

This inquiry is positioned within a broader body of research on curricula and textbooks, taking into account their intersection with the problematic of the relationship between knowledge and ideology. Numerous scholars from Algeria and the wider Maghreb have contributed to this field, including Hassan Remaoun, Mohamed Ghalem, Omar Larjan, Mustapha Haddab, Zouari Boughoura, Ahmed Keroumi, and Mustapha Mohsen, among others. From this standpoint, it may be argued that research in this domain is already well advanced and calls for a synthetic assessment of the current state of scholarship.

What is particularly noteworthy is that ongoing reforms within the educational system have generated a significant research challenge, articulated in the following question : Is the relationship between the cognitive and the ideological in post-reform textbooks of the same nature as that found in pre-reform textbooks, or has there been a transformation in this relationship ?