University students are increasingly choosing to purchase e-textbooks for their mobile devices as an alternative to traditional textbooks. This study examines the relationship between textbook format ...and 538 university students' grades and perceived learning scores. Results demonstrate that there was no difference in cognitive learning and grades between the two groups, suggesting that the electronic textbook is as effective for learning as the traditional textbook. The mean scores indicated that students who chose e-textbooks for their education courses had significantly higher perceived affective learning and psychomotor learning than students who chose to use traditional print textbooks.
► Students who used e-textbooks compared to traditional texts had higher affective learning. ► Students who used e-textbooks compared to traditional texts had higher psychomotor learning. ► Grades and cognitive learning did not reach statistical significance. ► This study is among the first to address efficacy of el-textbooks during a semester long course.
This paper presents a survey study aiming to systematically examine, analyse and review relevant research focusing on mathematics textbooks and hence identify future directions in this field of ...research. The literature surveyed is selected from different data sources, including mainly journal articles, research theses and conference proceedings. The survey revealed that important progress has been made over the last few decades in mathematics textbook research, though the major achievement has been concentrated in the areas of textbook analysis (including textbook comparison), and the use of textbooks in teaching and learning. It is overall no longer true that the textbook research in mathematics is “scattered, inconclusive, and often trivial” as described six decades ago; however, the development of research on mathematics textbooks has been unbalanced in different areas. Following the review and discussion, the paper proposes five needed directions for advancing the research in this field.
“Echoing Events” questions the perpetuation, actualization, and canonization of national narratives in English and Dutch history textbooks, wide-reaching media that tendentially inspire a sense of ...meaning, memory, and thus also identity. The longitudinal study begins in the 1920s, when the League of Nations launched several initiatives to reduce strong nationalistic visions in textbooks, and ends in the new millennium with the revival of national narratives in both countries. The analysis shows how and why textbook authors have narrated different histories – which vary in terms of context, epoch, and place – as ‘echoing events’ by using recurring plots and the same combinations of historical analogies. This innovative and original study thus investigates from a new angle the resistance of national narratives to change.
Like all school textbooks, geography textbooks are authored. Almost all textbook research in and beyond geography has neglected their authors. This questionnaire-based multinational research project ...investigated the perceptions of 71 primary and secondary school geography textbook authors from seven countries in five continents. Though not intended as a definitive study, the findings identified several values and areas of expertise which many textbook authors in different countries held to be important for their work. While there were variations across country contexts, there was much that was shared by the authors. Authors valued enabling students to develop geographical perspectives, knowledge and skills and informed attitudes about the world when learning in real world contexts and making connections with everyday life. It was notable that the focus of authors on subject knowledge, the pedagogy of textbooks and the students who will use the textbooks aligned with these same key elements which are central to curriculum making. Authors can be said to perceive their role as creating a geography curriculum, albeit externally to any specific geography classroom, through their textbooks
This study examines the representation of cultures and communities in the world across five editions of New Headway elementary level textbook (NHE). It conducts a diachronic content analysis to ...explore how the representation of cultures and communities has evolved in NHE across five editions since its first edition’s publication in 1993. Adapting Kachru’s model of concentric circles for data analysis, we utilized Yuen’s adaptation of ACTFL’s (1996) standards for language teaching via the categories of persons, perspectives, products, and practices. Our findings mainly indicate that the Inner Circle has maintained its dominance in NHE’s content over five editions. We found that there was an imbalance favoring European cultures against non-European cultures in the Expanding Circle. On the other hand, Expanding Circle / Non-European and Outer Circle are underrepresented with around 10% of the textbook content. These findings show that NHE’s cultural focus is on the Western, European, and Anglo-American world of English-speaking communities. Such an imbalance in representation of world cultures leads us to conclude that NHE’s writers do not sufficiently raise English learners’ global cultural consciousness since there has been little engagement with multicultural view of English language varieties. We invite teachers, learners, and material developers to critically approach, analyse, revise, and/or adapt textbook content as discursive constructions which shape the imagination of cultures and communities.
A new wave of developing English textbooks for compulsory education in China demands for more attention on the integration of textbook research and practice. While increasing research has ...investigated the design and implementation of English textbooks for Chinese learners, there is a lack of a systematic review on the structural development of this field, leaving prominent research areas, research methods, and enlightening findings unclear. This paper addresses the above issues by systematically reviewing 530 research concerning English textbooks in the Chinese context. As a data-driven study, we applied content analysis and developed a coding scheme, manually annotated all data and cross-checked our annotations. Findings from descriptive statistics and content analysis showed increasing attention on textbooks research from Chinese researchers, inadequate empirical studies, insufficient effort on English textbooks for compulsory education, and three research themes, i.e. textbooks production, textbooks implementation, and textbooks evaluation. Future directions and implications are further discussed.
Our energy future Jones, Carla S; Mayfield, Stephen P
2016., 20160216, 2016, 2016-02-16
eBook
Our Energy Future is an introductory textbook for the study of energy production, alternative and renewable fuels, and ways to build a sustainable energy future. Jones and Mayfield explore the ...creation and history of fossil fuels, their impact on the environment, and how they have become critical to our society. The authors also outline how adopting sustainable biofuels will be key to the future of energy stability and discuss a number of renewable energy options and biofuel feedstocks that are replacements for petroleum-based products. Our society is consuming energy at an alarming rate, and the authors warn that continuing fuel-usage patterns could permanently damage the environment. This book emphasizes the importance of continued scientific, agricultural, and engineering development while it outlines the political and environmental challenges that will accompany a complete shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy and biomass. Our Energy Future is an accessible resource for undergraduate students studying biofuels and bioenergy.
Background: Undergirding the dominant research focus on gender representation in textbooks is the assumption that making texts progressive in their construction of gender is a panacea for equality in ...the classroom. As this study demonstrates, however, textbooks containing traditional representations of gender can be used to challenge biases, while textbooks with progressive representations can be undermined. This suggests that "fixing" gender in textbooks to make them progressive does not guarantee how teachers enact them in the classroom. Indeed, the predominant focus on texts, rather than teachers' gender knowledge base, has had little impact on classroom practice. This justifies the shift to "teacher talk around the text," which, as scholars argue, should be the focus of research. Purpose and Research Questions: This study, which goes beyond the dominant focus on textbooks to draw attention to how teachers take them up, was guided by the following research questions -- How do teachers use gendered textbooks in the classroom? What discourses and practices circulate? What informs teacher selection of textbooks? Is gender one of the considerations? Context: The study was situated in Uganda, a multiethnic patriarchal developing country in East Africa. Research Design: A qualitative case study approach was taken up with two cases, specifically an affluent girls' single-sex school and a less affluent mixed school. This illuminated how gender is constructed in relation to other socially constructed categories. Data Collection and Analysis: The investigation involved textual analysis, classroom observations, and interviews, which were analyzed using feminist poststructural discourse analysis to identify and name discourses and discursive practices cited during the classroom interactions. Findings/Results: Overall, the teachers' use of textbooks in both cases challenged previous research, which assumed that teachers necessarily take up gender as constructed in textbooks. This overlooked teachers' gendered truths, which, as shown in my study, informed how they took up and/or rejected both traditional and transgressive texts. Traditional gendered texts, which illuminated dominant realities, surprisingly offered more disruptive potential for engaging with gendered hierarchies than did progressive texts, which constructed marginal realities and/or realities incongruent with dominant truths. Conclusions/Recommendations: The study has implications for teacher education in Uganda, which should prepare teachers by unsettling the taken-for-granted gender knowledge base, through disrupting traditional gendered ways of thinking/discourses. This will create possibility for producing teachers who can critically navigate gendered texts, by deconstructing gendered power relations during classroom engagement with texts. Indeed, as research has indicated, teachers are capable of challenging gender bias if well prepared. It will also be useful for researchers to observe lessons in which expert teachers engage with gendered textbooks, providing a model to inform teacher education.
This paper adopts a multimodal approach to the latest generation of digital mathematics textbooks (print and online) to investigate how the design, content, and features facilitate the construction ...of mathematical knowledge for teaching and learning purposes. The sequential organisation of the print version is compared to the interactive format of the online version which foregrounds explanations and important mathematical content while simultaneously ensuring a high level of connectivity and coherence across hierarchical layers of mathematical knowledge. For example, mathematical content in the online version is linked to definitions, theorems, examples and exercises that can be viewed in the original context in which the material was presented, and the content can also be linked to mathematics software. Significantly, the development process for the new generation of mathematics textbooks involves using a 'design neutral' markup language so that the books are simultaneously published as both print books and online books. In this development process, the structure of the chapters, sections, and subsections with their various elements are explicitly marked-up in the master document and preserved in the output format, giving rise to new methodologies for large-scale analysis of mathematics textbooks and student use of these books. For example, tracking methodologies and interactive visualisations of student viewings of online mathematical textbooks are identified as new research directions for investigating how students engage with mathematics textbooks within and across different educational contexts. Author abstract
Decades of research have established that most English Language Teaching (ELT) contexts rely on textbooks and corresponding materials to drive the education process. Textbook analysis as a vital ...quality control check of these products has also become a popular trend in applied linguistics and second language (L2) research. In the main, ELT textbooks have been conceptualized in past literature as supporting target language proficiency attainment while also giving the teacher everything required to conduct a lesson. Textbook analysis has subsequently checked products’ utility and quality in relation to such proficiency development. Over time, the scope of textbook analyses has expanded to include issues such as cultural representations in these products to address how the products help students become better at English in a multicultural and globalized world. While teachers and researchers can reference numerous well-known books on these phenomena, a concise summary of how textbooks function within ELT contexts and the defining features of textbook analysis research appears to be lacking. This brief report meets this need and is useful to stakeholders in the ELT community, such as teachers and program managers, who might not have the time nor the resources to consult such extensive sources of information.
