ELTJ in defence of textbooks Part One

There’s been a lot of online chatter on the topic of textbooks recently, all of which are neatly linked to by this recent Turklish TEFL blog post. As if to prove that the online world is just a faster and less informed version of journals of the 90s (“History repeats itself twice, once as farce and once in Twitter”), here are some old but still very pertinent quotes on the matter:

“How can we explain this apparent mismatch between the movement of language teaching theory towards greater negotiation and individual choice in the classroom on the one hand, and the development of ever more comprehensive and structured textbooks on the other? Are we perhaps just in a timelag between the evolution of ideas and their transference into the classroom? Are vulnerable teachers and learners being seduced and exploited by the attractive package deals offered by commercial publishers, as Littlejohn (1992) implies? Or is the market-place telling us that our theories about language teaching and learning are simply wrong?”

“Negotiation: This is an essential element of any interaction. It requires equal access for all to the content and procedures being negotiated. Only a textbook can show as fully as possible what will actually be done in the lesson. (Recognizing, of course, that the same material can also be interpreted in many different ways.) Although the existence of a textbook may be thought to constrain negotiation, in fact it makes it possible, by providing something to negotiate about.”

“The very fact that a lesson is a dynamic interaction. therefore, leads not to a need for maximum freedom, but to a need for a predictable and visible structure both within the lesson and across lessons. The textbook, we suggest, is the best means of providing this structure.”

“the most important requirement in the process of change is security. This reinforces the need for structure and visibility. Van den Akker (1988) illustrates this well.

Implementing: Van den Akker was interested in how written materials can help teachers in the implementation of a new curriculum, in this case a new science curriculum introducing a more enquiry-based approach. Two groups of teachers were given different materials. The control group’s materials were more loosely structured, gave more options, and generally left most decision-making as to how they should implement the curriculum guidelines to the teachers. The experimental group’s materials had fewer options, more ‘how-to-do-it’ advice and structured guidance, such as basic lesson plans giving sequences of activities, time estimates for each activity, and explanations of the function of each stage of the lesson. The results of the research showed that the experimental group’s lessons were much closer to the intentions of the curriculum developers, in that they were more successful in maintaining the enquiry-based approach. The control group teachers on the other hand frequently lost control and reverted to more traditional forms of teaching. Furthermore, the experimental group reported greater satisfaction with the materials, their lessons, and their performance. Van den Akker concluded that the highly structured approach is more effective in getting curriculum change into the classroom. He also concludes that, although this research was only concerned with the implementation phase, the change is likely to be more permanent: ‘Certainly, if early experiences have been satisfying and yield positive results (both in teacher performance and in students’ learning) there seems more chance of commitment to a programme and of stable and substantial changes in the direction of proposals for an innovation.’ (ibid.: 54).”

“If we argue that textbooks should be done away with because they cannot meet all the needs of a given situation, are we also to argue that since no teacher can meet all the needs of any given learner, teachers should be done away with? Nothing that happens in education is anything more than a workable compromise, and we cannot uniquely condemn textbooks because they are not a perfect fit.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if we all baked our own bread, preferably from our own home-grown, organic wheat, rather than buying a cut-and-wrapped loaf at the supermarket’? In reality, of course, the convenience of the supermarket is overwhelming in determining our choice. The important conclusion to draw, surely, is not that we should encourage everyone to make their own bread, but that we should educate people to be more informed, more discerning, and more influential consumers.”

All quotes from Tom Hutchinson and Eunice Torres in ELTJ 48-4-3, read only thanks to the new online membership system

NB: The above does not necessarily reflect the views of Alex Case, because he doesn’t know what his views are yet. And of course the views of Alex Case almost certainly don’t reflect those of anyone else, least of all the owner of TEFL.net

Tags: Quotes

This entry was posted on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 12:37 pm and is filed under ELT publishing, TEFL, Turklish TEFL, textbooks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.