This report examines the nature of the modern basal reader, its economics, and use. First, the report provides a history showing how the confluence of business principles, positivistic science, and behavioral psychology led to the transformation of reading textbooks into basal readers. Next, the report examines objectives and subjective factors…

Textbooks may indicate the quantity and quality of subject content in a secondary school curriculum. They tend to conform to state departments of education and large local school districts' curriculum guides and to be the dominant instructional medium in high school courses. Examinations of widely-used textbooks may indicate the strengths and…

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…

Several of the current controversial issues on education's agenda are discussed. Chapters are devoted to (1) religion in the schools; (2) freedom of expression; (3) textbook censorship; and (4) compensatory social programs (including drug testing, drug problems, and bilingual education). In each of these areas, the issues surrounding the…

A recurring question in the study of the specialized English used in various technical disciplines is the degree to which contextual variables--including subject matter--account for the particular distributions of lexicogrammatical features in texts of different disciplines. Two contextual variables related to role relationships in the semiotic…

This study determined the quantitative and qualitative portrayal of females and minorities in the illustrations of seven contemporary elementary science textbook series. An evaluation instrument was devised to determine the current status of the targeted groups. Illustrations were evaluated on the basis of minority versus nonminority and male…

Reports a study to determine what a typical student might be expected to learn about population from textbooks in the areas of American history, world history, and civics/social problems. (SH)

Examines the legal and constitutional implications of the fundamentalist movement to win equal time for creation doctrine in science and biology textbooks. (JR)

Syntax in four published series of elementary school readers was analyzed to discover patterns of complexity increasing from first to sixth grade, to identify structures accounting for differences across the grades, and to compare the frequency of specific structures among the series. Analyses of 16 surface structures representing complexities…

Article adapted from a talk to the Connecticut Council for Social Studies on May 3, 1968.

The lack of cultural content, low interest level, and crowdedness of second language textbooks arise because every textbook represents a compromise: between the publisher's need to sell a book and the author's need to address specific pedagogical issues, and between the need to explain grammatical points fully and the need to explain them briefly.…

In order to determine how much censorship was taking place in Illinois social studies classes, 200 principals were asked to respond to a questionnaire regarding censorship of teaching methods and social studies textbooks. The principals were asked to respond to the following topics concerning the degree of censorship encountered for each item:…

This is a report of the Japan/United States Textbook Study Project the goal of which is to improve each nation's textbooks, especially in regard to the treatment of Japan in U.S. textbooks, the treatment of the United States in Japanese textbooks, and the treatment of relations between the two countries in each nation's textbooks. Panelists from…

THE EXPERIMENTAL EDITION OF "NAT THE RAT" REPRESENTS LEVEL TWO OF THE "MIAMI LINGISTIC READERS" DESIGNED TO BE USED IN TEACHING BEGINNING READING TO PUPILS WHOSE PRESCHOOL LANGUAGE WAS OTHER THAN ENGLISH. THE FIVE MAJOR CHARACTERS IN THE STORY ARE INTRODUCED ON THE FIRST FIVE PAGES OF THE PUPILS' BOOK. ILLUSTRATIONS (BLACK AND…

This monograph describes the experience of Israeli curriculum developers as they wrote textbooks of regional geography for the primary and junior high school levels. There are three parts to the paper. Part I discusses the reform of the geography curriculum in Israeli schools in the 1960s. The new curriculum emphasized three areas: geography of…