Although textbooks structure from 75 to 90 percent of classroom instruction, they are often criticized for contributing to American students' appalling ignorance and for being compendia of inadequately treated topics. This article explores deficiencies in science, social studies, and history and offers remedial actions. The key is a careful…

Contends that if textbooks are to be improved it is essential that teachers, administrators, and textbook selectors become more demanding and discriminating consumers. Examines various textbook components that need improvement such as: (1) photographs; (2) basic skills exercises; (3) worksheets; and (4) content. (BSR)

As much as 90 percent of classroom instructional time is structured by instructional materials, especially textbook. Research shows, however, that textbooks alone are not enough. Analyses of elementary grade social studies textbooks reveal that the breadth is too wide and the depth too shallow. Specific examples are provided. (RM)

This study analyzed the photographs and other illustrations from chapters covering subject matter common to seven secondary-level civics textbooks--the Constitution, the federal court system, local government, and economic systems--in order to determine how instructionally relevant they were to teaching and learning the content and concepts that…

This study: (1) comprehensively reviews previous research on the treatment of evolution in high school biology textbooks; (2) describes the treatment of evolutionary theory, including mention of creationist explanations of the development of life forms, in the most recent editions of 15 high school biology textbooks from the major publishers; and…

The selection of textbooks used in content analysis to determine values taught to students is important. Only widely used texts must be analyzed. The samples of U.S. history texts used by Fitzgerald (1979) and Barth and Shermis (1980) in their studies were not representative of textbooks used in schools. (RM)

The paper analyzes seven widely-used fifth grade social studies textbooks with the hypothesis that texts are unnecessarily loaded with poorly conceived instructional design features that often do not relate to content or skills and tend to minimize the primary function of the texts. Using present and future challenges facing the United States as a…

Stating that the primary function of textbooks is to transmit quantity and quality of knowledge, Woodward argues that photographs and other design features should be relevant to the topic, extending learning beyond the written text. Presents recommendations for evaluating the instructional quality of textbook photographs. (GEA)

Faced with a market that puts a premium on newness, artwork, and copyright date, the textbook industry seems to have been forced into a hectic textbook revision cycle in which improvement in instructional quality takes a poor second place to more superficial changes. While educators think they are getting newer, different, and, therefore better…

The European history textbooks of four authors, Phillip Van Ness Meyers, Willis Mason West, Hutton Webster, and James Harvey Robinson, are described to show how they responded to and reflected the changing nature and function of the high school from 1880 to 1930. Data for the study came from educational histories, committee reports, journals,…

This paper suggests that some of the U.S. history textbooks selected and analyzed by Frances Fitzgerald in her research on the political socialization function of U.S. history ("America Revised," 1979) were never widely used in schools and that the results of her study are, therefore, unrepresentative. The paper also presents a…

To determine how textbook publishers have changed the content of teachers' manuals designed to accompany basal reading series, a study was undertaken to examine manuals published by two different publishers since the l920s. Ten fifth grade manuals were reviewed for physical characteristics, tests, number of stories, instructional suggestions,…

A study examined the changing role and status of the elementary school teacher as projected in the teachers' guides that accompany reading textbooks. Twelve fifth-grade teachers' guides for each decade since 1920 were analyzed by scrutinizing every sixth chapter, story, or lesson for (1) physical characteristics, (2) testing components, (3) number…