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
What is a textbook ?
Textbook and instruction design
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.
Textbooks are usually part of a pedagogical design, i.e. it can be the center piece of a course syllabus, it can be used for self-study (students and professionals), teachers can assign just parts for reading. According to use contexts, functions of a textbook are not the same. But we do argue, that one can identify particular functional and structural questions related to production, structure, function, use, etc. of textbooks.
Cultural differences
From what I know (naively), functions of the textbook in the system and the ways they are written differ a lot within the few systems I know:
- In the US, in particular in so-called teaching universities, the textbook is a center stage. It duplicates in way the teacher.
- In Germany, Switzerland and France in the "normal" university systems there are few textbooks. Students are exposed to more lecturing and supplementary reading is mostly introductory books or academic literature.
There is a tradition of the pedagogical manual. Interestingly, the Wikipedia textbook translates in french to school manual or "pedagogical manual" (manuel scolaire) and in German to instructional book (Lehrbuch, "lehr" refers to teaching).
Let's have a look at the German definition of "textbook" in wikipedia (retrieved 13:38, 10 August 2007 (MEST)).
I wonder if there is a difference between "Lehrstoff" and "Lehrmaterial". Authors then further state that such books present dominant theory in simplyfied form, but also sometimes on-going debates. Furthermore the authors then define two special cases:
- Repetitorium, i.e. manuals that help to prepare exams
- Schulbuch (school books), i.e. textbooks used a school level.
- To this we can add lecturing scripts (in fench "polycopiés" in reference to the production process), i.e. a text written by professor and that contains his lecture.
The French translations are also interesting.
{{quotationbox|The Manuel scolaire (Pedagogical manual) (from latin manus, the hand), was considered in the XIX century a book that summarizes all other. It is didactic [instructional] book that has handy format and includes the essential knowledge of a given domain.
It is also funny to see how different language versions are linked:
en.wikipedia.org Textbook -> de.wikipedia.org Lehrbuch
en.wikipedia.org Textbook -> fr.wikipedia.org Manuel_scolaire
de.wikipedia.org Lehrbuch -> en.wikipedia.org Textbook
de.wikipedia.org Lehrbuch -> fr.wikipedia.org Traité (littérature)
de.wikipedia.org Schulbuch -> en.wikipedia.org Textbook
de.wikipedia.org Schulbuch -> fr.wikipedia.org -
fr.wikipedia.org Manuel_scolaire -> de.wikipedia.org Lehrbuch
fr.wikipedia.org Manuel_scolaire -> en.wikipedia.org Textbook
fr.wikipedia.org Traité (littérature) -> de.wikipedia.org Lehrbuch
fr.wikipedia.org Traité (littérature) -> en.wikipedia.org Textbook
Finally let's have a look at Textbook in simple English Wikipedia. I like that definition almost better than the "normal" one because it is functional, not structual.
This short an informal discussion of Wikipedia definitions tells us the following: In the eyes of probably not so informed Wikipedia authors:
- English only has one major genre: The textbook
- Germans and French make a distinction between university books and schoolbooks
- French consider university books to be expository (no built-in pedagogy), whereas Germans just mentionned "didactically prepared contents".
- This difference between US vs. German/French definition does not exist for schoolbooks.
- Another difference that appears in some article is the "dumbing down" questions. There is also a debate in the U.S., but in some European systems, belief that students should be exposed to "real literature" (academic or technical manuals) is very strong. I.e. personnaly (Daniel K. Schneider) in my technical courses, I leave it open to the students what books they want to buy and rather suggest O'Reilly books. Only when I am teaching at a local American teaching university I use these 600-1500 books but I noticed that students do no really work trough them as they should ... (there is whole literature on that).
Textbook genres
- See [[textbook
Links
- General
- Internet resources for scientific writing by Svetla Baykoucheva
- Textbook (Wikipedia entry)
- Advice on writing textbooks
- Examples of (technical) author guidelines
- Pearson Higher Education (includes brands like Prentice Hall, Addison-Wesley, Longman, Allyn & Bacon, and Benjamin Cummings).
- 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.
- Les manuels scolaires et la fabrique en masse des non-lecteurs
- 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.
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