Construction of the Consciousness of the Chinese National Community in Textbooks from a Narratological Perspective

Abstract

Forging a strong sense of the Chinese national community is the core task of school education in the new era, with textbooks serving a critical role as key carriers of knowledge transmission and value cultivation. This paper adopts a narratological theoretical perspective and employs textual analysis to examine the thematic textbook Unity of the Chinese Nation for junior high school students. An analytical framework is constructed across three dimensions—narrative mode, narrative structure, and reading—to systematically investigate the connotation, content, and logic of constructing the consciousness of the Chinese national community within the textbook. The research finds that the textbook employs a multimodal narrative mode combining 'linguistic and non-linguistic' elements, with 'enhancing commonality' as its guiding orientation. Organized around four major themes—'The Great Chinese Nation,' 'Jointly Building a Beautiful Homeland,' 'Jointly Constructing a Spiritual Home,' and 'Working Together to Realize the Chinese Dream'—the textbook develops a systematic educational pathway for the consciousness of the Chinese national community through thematic unit narrative structures and scaffolded learning designs. The findings offer theoretical reference value for deepening textbook construction and advancing the practice of ethnic solidarity and progress education.