Textbooks are a multimillion dollar publishing business in the United States. Even as 21st-century classrooms become more multimodal, digital and hardcopy textbooks remain a key feature of American education. Consequently, classroom textbooks have been shown to control knowledge dissemination across the content areas. In particular, health texts…

Asch's classic social pressure experiments are discussed in almost all introductory and social psychology textbooks. However, the results of these experiments have been shown to be misrepresented in textbooks. An analysis of textbooks from 1953 to 1984 revealed that although most of the responses on critical trials were independent correct ones,…

The factors involved in the selection of accounting textbooks are under-investigated, and most of the research is survey-based, largely ignoring the information that could be analyzed by direct inspection of textbook content and its impact on textbook selection. In this study the authors fill this lacuna by deploying content analysis of the…

This study sought to evaluate the adequacy of integration of problematic situations and general problem-solving strategies (heuristics) in grades 9 and 10 mathematics textbooks. Grade 9 and grade 10 mathematics textbooks were used for analysis. Document analysis and interview were used as data gathering instruments. Document analysis was carried…

Research about social studies textbooks overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that these books are unpopular and often the subject of intense criticisms. These criticisms concern anything ranging from the language they employ, to the way they are utilized by teachers, to the undue influence they exert on shaping and defining curriculum. This…

In an increasingly globalized world, writing courses, situated as they are in local institutional and rhetorical contexts, need to prepare writers for global writing situations. Taking introductory technical communication in the United States as a case study, this article describes how and to what extent global perspectives are incorporated into…

A content analysis of the textbooks used in the Dutch early childhood teacher education shows clear inconsistencies with the intended curriculum. Neither the content standards found in the professional profile for teachers nor the content standards from the educational profile of their training courses are adequately covered in the books. Whilst…

In this paper, we report on a comparison of the treatment of addition and subtraction of fractions in primary mathematics textbooks used in Cyprus, Ireland, and Taiwan. To this end, we use a framework specifically developed to investigate the learning opportunities afforded by the textbooks, particularly with respect to the…

The present study relates to a research line in didactics of science that focuses on the function that sign systems or semiotic modes have in communicative interactions in science classrooms. The study was conducted by 20 secondary and university science teachers who belong to the same research group LIEC ("Language and Science…

This article considers ideological, pedagogical and constitutive functions of children's picture books, with particular emphasis on the ways in which texts construct children and childhood in economic terms. Through an analysis of Lauren Childs' "Hubert Horatio Bartle Bobton-Trent" and Anthony Browne's "Voices in the Park", the article…

Reported are results of a survey in which 13 series of secondary level geography textbooks were tested to determine readability. Findings indicate that there is little difference in the readability level of geography texts published for grade six and those published for the secondary level. References are included. (Author/DB)

This report presents a detailed analysis of "Discover Art," an elementary textbook series by Laura Chapman. The study was guided by a large set of framing questions requiring a detailed examination of the series' goals, rationale, and structure; content selection, organization, and emphasis; the coherence of content explication in the…

Because the state of Texas is the largest single market for secondary texts in the nation and because its state adoption process has drawn a small but well-organized group of protestors, the Texas textbook adoption process has begun to shape textbooks in use nationwide. A study was conducted to examine the arguments most recently used by citizens…

Provides five key questions teachers need to answer in order to determine whether a textbook can be used effectively in the classroom. (FL)