Textbook

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Definition

According to Wikipedia, retrieved 19:57, 8 August 2007 (MEST), “a textbook is a manual of instruction or a standard book in any branch of study. They are produced according to the demand of the educational institutions. Textbooks are usually published by one of the four major publishing companies. Although most textbooks are only published in printed format, some can now be viewed online.”

Textbook is a teaching tool (material) which presents the subject matter defined by the curriculum. A university textbook is required to contain the complete overview of the subject, including the theories, as well as to be of a more permanent character.(CARNet, retrieved 19:57, 8 August 2007 (MEST)).

In this overview article we just will try to explicit a bit the textbook genre and provide a few major links and references. For further reading, see the related articles below.

Related articles

• Textbook writing tutorial (I later may move some stuff of this article there - DKS)
• Textbook research
• Textbook genres and examples

Introduction: What is a textbook ?

We'd like to argue that textbooks are generally an element in a larger instructional design (e.g. a course). Therefore one must start by looking at the function(s) of a textbook.

In other words, use and production of a textbook is related to a "normal" instructional design problems and one can rely on various design methods and instructional design models, based in turn on underlying psychological and pedagogical theory.

But we do argue, that one can identify particular functional and structural questions related to production, structure, function, use, etc. of textbooks.

Textbook writing and pedagogical theory

Firstly, textbook writing is related to instructional design and therefore one might look at textbooks in terms of someinstructional design models and methods.

On a prescriptive level, one might argue that authors should use at least some kind of backwards design, i.e. define what students are supposed to be able to do (e.g. solve problems) and then write the books that enables them to do so. In the same spirit, one also could argue that textbooks should respect some first principles of instruction, e.g. let's recall Merril's:

• The demonstration principle: Learning is promoted when learners observe a demonstration
• The application principle: Learning is promoted when learners apply the new knowledge
• The activation principle: Learning is promoted when learners activate prior knowledge or experience
• The integration principle: Learning is promoted when learners integrate their new knowledge into their everyday world
• The task-centered principle: Learning is promoted when learners engage in a task-centered instructional strategy

However, textbook writing is a specific activity and one should not forget that textbooks are usually just an element in a given pedagogic strategy and must be planned together with possible pedagogical use cases. E.g. Horsley and Walker (2005:265) identify a changing conception of textbooks that is related to chaning learning theories. Teaching and learning materials e.g. textbooks are used differently according to pedagogical theory:

• Transmission: Source of information, Basis of transmission, Knowledge authority, Structure of a teaching and learning program
• Constructivist: Activity and inquiry source; Provision of multiple sources for students; student knowledge ;construction Multiple sources for teacher selection.
• Sociocultural: Scaffolds learning; Enculturates students into disciplinary knowledge and practices; Source of inquiry activities; Basis of explicit teachings.

See also the related discussion around the pedagogical purpose of various kinds of learning objects.

This short discussion only tells us that textbooks can be analyzed in terms of their function and in this perspective it becomes less clear what a textbook is. E.g. Johnsen (2001) argues that “the definition of a textbook may be as general as to include other books made and published for educational purpose, or even any book used in the classroom. The textbook may also be a subset of an even broader and increasingly more commonly-used term "teaching media"”.

Daniel K. Schneider adheres to the idea that a textbook is a special genre of teaching media and that includes some kind of "built-in" pedgagogy.

Pedagogical objectives

Textbooks are written with pedagogical objectives in mind by the author. Of course, teacher and learners must construct their own representation and they sometimes re-purpose a text in ways not anticipated. E.g. a textbook, instead of for strong instruction, can be used just for reference.

For an author, there are several ways to manage objectives (each ISD model or extensions like the Kemp will tell you more). Often, advise on writing textbooks suggests to plan book chapters in terms of desired learning level outcomes.

Teacher's then defined reading assignments (textbooks as a whole or portions) in function of their pedagogical objectives. These may not be compatible with the original intent of the author.

The most important objectives concern learning objectives, e.g. what the student should master after having worked through the textbook, usually part of other class/homework activities. Again, both authors and teachers (and one could argue, learners too) should also engage in this exercise. For example, the IOWA writing assistant identifies 6 levels of emphasis based on Bloom's taxonomy of learning that we reproduce here exactly as defined in Applying your results (retrieved 20:03, 27 July 2007 (MEST)):

1. Knowledge: rote memorization, recognition, or recall of facts.
2. Comprehension: understanding what the facts mean.
3. Application: correct use of the facts, rules, or ideas.
4. Analysis: breaking down information into component parts.
5. Synthesis: combination parts to make a new whole.
6. Evaluation: judging the value or worth of information or ideas.

Depending on global objectives of the book, an author can put different emphasis on each "Bloom" level.

Objectives at book and chapter level should also be associated with activities, assessment, etc. Here is an example for Synthesis-level objective. Target students are students in educational technology. They have to prepare an e-Text about e-learning standards as an activity.

• Objective: "By the end of this section, you (as a student) will be able to design a learning object that introduces key components of e-learning standards, and in particular modeling languages.
• Activities: Make your own summary of the most important concepts you can find in articles on and then design of a course module with eXe
• Assessment: The course module
• Key Words: Design, formulate, build, invent, create, compose, generate, derive, modify, develop.

Usually in textbooks, objectives are not just used to plan the text, but they are made explicit. Objectives then can written out at the start of chapters and/or sections and activities inserted where appropriate. Hints for self-assessment can added too.

Texbook language and organization of contents

Textbooks, in language research seems to be identified as a genre (or genres). Most research focus on structual analysis of textbooks, but some research also produces knowledge that can be used for prescriptions: According to Jones (2005), textbook writers have three choices: simplification, easyfication, or the scaffolding of concept knowledge. We shall summarize some prescriptions can be derived from this article.

Simplification strategies - enhanced cohesion/coherence

• simplification of content: explain new technical terms as they arise
• simplification of form: make sure that the text has cohesive links and restores implicit relationships, e.g. when using general-specific of problem-solution progressions.
• simplification by including explanations and exemplifications
• using similar structures, i.e. syntactic repetition acts as a form of syntactic scaffolding.

Note that simplification may turn against learning. For example NcNamara et al. (1996) found that “text coherence improved readers' comprehension, but also that giving readers with sufficient background knowledge an incoherent text that forced them to infer unstated relations engaged them in compensatory processing, allowing deeper text understanding than might occur with a coherent text.”

Easification strategies - enhancing structure

The purpose easification is to “give learners an additional instructional appahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textbookratus by developing a kind of "access structure" around the text without his [sic] having gone through the intervening stages of simplified materials” Bhatia cited by Jones (2005:9). Examples of such devices are:

• Provide introductory paragraph(s) to a text (or text segment)
• Provide a structural analysis ('tagging' sections) to a text (or text segment), e.g. as in Advance Organizers.
• Provide a schematic representation of a text (or text segment)
• Add annotations/explanations to the text, e.g. marginalia
• Add metadiscursive commentaries (before, in the middle, or after)
• Add questions to encourage interactions with the text

Scaffolding - providing domain knowledge

“Scaffolding in the sense intended here means the provision of a series of carefully designed pre-task exercises (or activities) which allow students to familiarize themselves with concepts of increasing complexity and to explore these concepts in terms of their reactances and interrelations.” Jones (2005:10)

Typical activities can be:

• filling in gapped texts
• complete sentences
• propositional clusters
• produce or complete tables and flow charts
• write summaries of various sorts, e.g. include critique, most things relevant, organize information, etc.

Note that these activities can be assigned by teacher, i.e. must not necessarily be part of the text itself.

Links

General

• Internet resources for scientific writing by Svetla Baykoucheva
• Textbook (Wikipedia entry)

Advice on writing textbooks

See textbook writing tutorial

Examples of (technical) author guidelines

• Pearson Higher Education (includes brands like Prentice Hall, Addison-Wesley, Longman, Allyn & Bacon, and Benjamin Cummings).
  • Prentice Hall guidelines
• Guidelines for Preparing Camera-Ready Copy, Wiley - Old version
• Manuscript Guidelines for Higher Education

Electronic textbooks

• Ruth Wilson and Monica Landoni, Computer and Information Science Department, University of Strathclyde. Electronic Textbook Design Guidelines (HTML/Word/PDF).
• Textbook League, a resource for middle-school and high-school educators.

Discussions

• A Dumbed-Down Textbook Is "A Textbook for All Students", by William J. Bennetta, The Textbook Letter, May-June 1997.
• The Tragic Decline In Textbooks. (actually a discussion about "decline of the school").
• Dumbing Down Revisited by M.E. Lepionka, Society Of Academic Authors.

Organizations and conferences

• The International Association for Research on Textbooks and Educational Media
• The Eighth International Conference On Learning And Educational Media. Caught in the Web or lost in the Textbook? (include online proceedings)

Software

See various writing tools for a longer list of tools and a discussion of various writing tool categories.

• IOWA, Instructional Objective Writing Assistant

References

• Johnsen, Egil Børre (2001), Textbooks in the Kaleidoscope, A Critical Survey of Literature and Research on Educational Texts, Translated by Linda Sivesind, Digital Edition Tønsberg: Vestfold College, 2001 HTML (This on-line text also includes a good bibliography, up the early 1990's).

• Lepionka, Mary Ellen (2003), Writing and Developing Your College Textbook, ISBN 0-9728164-0-2. (This practical book gets good reviews. I bought it and find it useful - Daniel K. Schneider)

Practical Textbook and book writing

See: textbook writing tutorial

Textbook research

See the textbook research article for longer bibliography