According to Wikipedia, retrieved 19:57, 8 August 2007 (MEST), “a textbook is a manual of instruction or a standard book in any branch of study. They are produced according to the demand of the educational institutions. Textbooks are usually published by one of the four major publishing companies. Although most textbooks are only published in printed format, some can now be viewed online.”
Textbook is a teaching tool (material) which presents the subject matter defined by the curriculum. A university textbook is required to contain the complete overview of the subject, including the theories, as well as to be of a more permanent character.(CARNet, retrieved 19:57, 8 August 2007 (MEST)).
In this overview article we just will try to explicit a bit the textbook genre and provide a few major links and references. For further reading, see the related articles below.
We'd like to argue that textbooks are generally an element in a larger instructional design (e.g. a course). Therefore one must start by looking at the function(s) of a textbook.
In other words, use and production of a textbook is related to a "normal" instructional design problems and one can rely on various design methods and instructional design models, based in turn on underlying psychological and pedagogical theory.
Textbooks are usually part of a pedagogical design, i.e. it can be the center piece of a course syllabus, it can be used for self-study (students and professionals), teachers can assign just parts for reading. According to use contexts, functions of a textbook are not the same. But we do argue, that one can identify particular functional and structural questions related to production, structure, function, use, etc. of textbooks.
Functions of the textbook and ways they are written differ a lot within the few cultural systems Daniel K. Schneider is somewhat familiar with:
Let's have a look at the German definition of "textbook" in Wikipedia (retrieved 16:39, 10 August 2007 (MEST)).
I wonder if there is a difference between "Lehrstoff" and "Lehrmaterial". Authors then further state that such books present dominant theory in simplified form, but also sometimes on-going debates. Furthermore the authors then define two special cases:
The French translations are also interesting.
It is also funny to see how different language versions are linked:
en.wikipedia.org Textbook -> de.wikipedia.org Lehrbuch
en.wikipedia.org Textbook -> fr.wikipedia.org Manuel_scolaire
de.wikipedia.org Lehrbuch -> en.wikipedia.org Textbook
de.wikipedia.org Lehrbuch -> fr.wikipedia.org Traité (littérature)
de.wikipedia.org Schulbuch -> en.wikipedia.org Textbook
de.wikipedia.org Schulbuch -> fr.wikipedia.org -
fr.wikipedia.org Manuel_scolaire -> de.wikipedia.org Lehrbuch
fr.wikipedia.org Manuel_scolaire -> en.wikipedia.org Textbook
fr.wikipedia.org Traité (littérature) -> de.wikipedia.org Lehrbuch
fr.wikipedia.org Traité (littérature) -> en.wikipedia.org Textbook
Finally let's have a look at Textbook in simple English Wikipedia. I like that definition almost better than the "normal" one because it is functional, not structural.
This short an informal discussion of Wikipedia definitions tells us the following: In the eyes of probably not so informed Wikipedia authors:
There is also a difference in format. I noticed in particular that most German textbooks (at least for the humanities) are usually cheap and small pocket books, whereas in the US it is the opposite: Textbooks are huge (large and fat) and expensive. In France most textbooks (I believe) are sort of mid-sized softcovers, but there is also a series of Que sais-je, about 1200 little (128 pages) didactic books without illustrations for almost every domain that exists. They are usually written by a leading domain expert. On the other extreme (both in France and Germany) there also exist huge and large textbooks, but mostly restricted to domains like medicine or law.
But then it gets more complicated, there is not just a difference between language cultures, but between national cultures. E.g. Belgium textbooks (e.g. DeBoek) are much more based on instructional design principles and do have a structure similar to typical US books, but in Daniel K. Schneider's opinion much less verbose and made in way that information can be found again (see the Depelteau example) I discussed.
There is also a debate in the U.S., but in some European systems belief that students should be exposed to "real literature" (academic or technical manuals) is very strong and just in France or Germany. E.g. “The general sentiment, in Britain at least, seems to be that the knowledge in textbooks is in some way second-rate knowledge and that the teachers, the writers and the learners who engage with them in their different ways are somehow doing something second-rate”. (Issit, 2005: 690)
I.e. personally (Daniel K. Schneider) in my technical courses, I leave it open to the students what books they want to buy and rather suggest O'Reilly books. Only when I am teaching at a local American teaching university I use these 600-1500 books, but then I noticed that students do no really work trough them as they should ... (there is whole literature on that).
The question is how teachers and students make sense of the textbook within the context of wider learning environments and what function it has in relation to other teacher materials and other learning activities.
See the textbook writing tutorial and textbook research for more.
Examples:
Daniel K. Schneider has the suspicion that a typical US student enrolled in a typical teaching university does not read and work through the textbook as the authors planned it, i.e. they rather use as complementary reading or reference and skip activities that don't seem to have a direct relation to quizzes administered by the teacher. But I'd have to dig into textbook research to be sure about this.
It is also argued that textbooks, if available cheaply, would have bright future in the third world. However, one study made in Namibia found that textbooks are very much underused, i.e. “The major uses of textbooks in class were for diagrams and data, and to verify factual information. Occasionally, questions in textbooks were used as homework to test and/or consolidate knowledge.” (Lubben, 2003).
See various writing tools for a longer list of tools and a discussion of various writing tool categories.