ABSTRACT
I conducted a study on value orientations in the Chinese language textbooks for secondary school students from 1950s to 1990s in China. I wanted to examine the dynamic transmission of value orientations presented in Chinese language textbooks, classroom interactions, and on campus between students and teachers. I focused on Tibetan Neidi1 classes (schools). Finally, I selected CZ Tibetan Secondary School as my research case school. However, when I entered the research context and observed preparatory grade Chinese language lessons, I found that Chinese teachers mostly focused on the analysis of words, sentences, and paragraph structure of the text. The value orientations presented in the texts of the Chinese language curriculum were not given much importance or extensively discussed between students and teachers. Two Chinese teachers told me it was because Tibetan students were still incapable of understanding and speaking the Chinese language well and that the teachers could not explore much more than the central thought (zhongxin sixiang) in the text stories. When I interviewed the students from different grades, most of them told me that there was a lack of Tibetan stories in Chinese textbooks. This observation made me rethink my research focus.
