The complexity of English phrasal verbs (PVs) often creates difficulties for English learners. Thus, helping English learners to learn English PVs more effectively has become a critical issue. For English learners in Taiwan, the content of English textbooks can considerably influence their acquisition of language features. The present study aimed to identify the PVs used in senior high English textbooks in Taiwan. The textbook corpora were compiled and PVs were extracted using Sketch Engine. The PV lists were then compared with the PHaVE List proposed by Garnier and Schmitt. The major findings are described in the following text. (1) The overlap rate between the PVs in the PHaVE List and those used in the textbooks was lower than 50%. (2) Significant differences existed between the PVs used in the textbooks (all versions) and those in the PHaVE List. Approximately 80 PVs in the PHaVE List never appeared in the textbooks. (3) With reference to the Corpus of Contemporary American English, some PVs in the PHaVE List belong to the spoken register; however, the PVs in the textbooks are mainly from novels and magazines. (4) Many verbs in the PVs that only appear in the textbooks were found to be more difficult verbs on the College Entrance Examination Center’s list of 7,000 English words.

　　This study investigated the division of study fields and curriculum development for secondary vocational schools at the national level in Germany. Using the comparative research method, the following findings were obtained. First, employment-oriented vocational school programs use training occupations as basic units, offering more than 500 training occupations, whereas academic-bound vocational schools provide six specialized study areas. Second, the employment-oriented curriculum is governed by laws of the Federation or the Länder, whereas the academic-bound curriculum’s development is governed by Länder laws. Third, the curricula for training occupations are updated according to industrial technology and social development and the training regulations are made to ensure education quality. Fourth, the curriculum development of dual-system occupations is initiated by industry associations and participated in by competent bodies. As for other vocational schools, the curriculum development is initiated by the Länder and participated in by schoolteachers. Fifth, the employment-oriented curriculum development emphasizes connecting the working world and schools’ learning content. By contrast, the academic-bound curriculum development underlines the feedback from school-site tests and social public opinion. Sixth, the curriculum design for employment-oriented vocational schools adopts the theme of a “learning field,” featuring comprehensive, applied, and interdisciplinary learning. Finally, this study discusses some implications for Taiwan secondary vocational education.

　　In education, the adoption of textbooks establishes an authoritative means to transmit and deliver official knowledge. Guided by the tenets of sociology of school knowledge and critical theories (e.g., Althusser’s ideology and Williams’ selective tradition), this study focused on the investigation of representations of the historical figure Christopher Columbus in seven senior high school history textbooks in Taiwan. The research involved an analysis of how the explorer is introduced and whether the textual depictions can cross the border of power relations to provide another story that differs from the mainstream story presented in the United States. Critical discourse analysis was adopted as a theoretical framework as well as an analytic strategy to undertake a three-layered analysis involving linguistic analysis, intertextual analysis, and an analysis of power relations. The research concluded that the Eurocentric historical tradition of assessing Columbus is still favored. The voices of the Native people are muted, and the devastating effects initiated by the explorer and his crewmen through their voyages to the Americas are ignored. Although presenting an extensive detailed version of history is not possible in textbooks, the incorporation of a more complicated illustration with multiple points of view is feasible and essential.

　　Textbooks are edited according to the Course of Study (COS), whose new version was announced in 2017 and will be fully implemented in 2020. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology entrusts textbook editing to private publishers, expecting them to edit textbooks with ingenuity according to the COS. This study used elementary school mathematics as an example to demonstrate how the editing of textbooks reflects the revised COS and to consider what types of concerns and essential ideas are necessary during this process.