In 2009, the National Science Foundation funded the "Dynabook: A Digital Resource and Preservice Model for Developing TPCK" project through its Discovery Research K-12 program. Dynabook project leaders and the National Science Foundation (NSF) recognized that digital textbooks would soon be a primary instructional resource, and seized…

A series of eight manuals dealing with the triad text characteristics--learning processes--learning outcomes are being prepared for use by authors and editors as an aid in the design and writing of educational texts. These manuals are based upon a model for the functioning of text characteristics which in turn is part of a decision model for the…

What are textbooks that teach? How can they help solve pedagogical problems? How can their pedagogical design be improved? These questions were used to develop a problem-solving model of textbook design. Textbooks that teach evoke learner activities designed to achieve contemporary cognitive goals. Suggestions for using textbooks to help solve…

Organized in three sections, this report presents the first case study from a project aimed at developing prototypes of ideal textbook chapters. The report (1) discusses the Ideal Text Project, in which a number of researchers in instructional science have been challenged to design a textbook chapter that incorporates the design features they…