Teachers Need to Know How to Evaluate Textbooks Efficiently And Effectively

By Kitty Lee on September 03, 2010
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All the teachers began by looking at the brief provided, and then at the contents pages and all at some stage looked at all the different components of the scheme: the student's book, the teacher's book, and the mini-grammar booklet. However, there was a clear difference among the three teachers in the route they followed while they were evaluating the textbook.

Ti started at Unit i, but did not find an activity that she considered to be suitable for a first lesson ('a warmer') and so jumped to Unit 5. This was one manifestation of her greater concern for classroom logistics than for the overall evaluation of the textbook. She then opened the teacher's book and examined the description of the workbook and the Tag Heuer Carrera Replica methodological guidelines. This led her to look for the mini-grammar booklet, by flicking through the student's book until she found it (tucked into a pocket in the back cover). Of the three participants, Ti seemed to be the least familiar with the commonalities of textbook layout. She then flicked through the mini-grammar booklet, and kept it to hand while she looked at various aspects of the student's book: pronunciation,Cartier White Gold Plated Leve Bracelet with Diamonds Paved, speaking (including the 'activity bank'),Cartier Double C Motif Charm Necklace in Gold Plated With Diamon, functional language, and dictionary work. For each of these areas of language, she looked at how it was covered in three or four of the units, using the contents pages to find the appropriate sections. Finally, she returned to the teacher's book and looked at the teaching notes in more detail.

Ta took a more direct approach, though it was not necessarily more time-efficient. He quickly found all the components of the book, looked at the front and back covers of the books and then flicked through both the student's book and the teacher's book before returning to the contents pages. He then looked through every page of the student's book in turn, until he reached Unit 13 (of 14). At this stage he referred to the teacher's book for Unit i and compared it to the student's book. He repeated this process for six other units and then returned again to the beginning of the student's book and flicked through both books once more, before giving an overall evaluation of the textbook package.

T3, on the other hand, adopted a more selective approach. He decided early on to focus on Unit 4, explaining that he expected the textbook to have 'settled down' by then. He looked at all the activities in this unit while referring to the other components of the course. Then he turned to the teacher's book and compared it to the student's book for Unit 4. He then looked at the Cartier Tank Replica methodology notes in the teacher's book in more detail, before briefly looking through Unit 8, comparing the student's book to the teaching notes.

Compared with Ti's 'back and forth' approach, Tj's sequence was very focused and time-efficient. Ti and T2 also showed some systematic, but their evaluations appeared to be more superficial because they made only very brief comments on different parts of the various units, without achieving T3's systematic approach at a deeper level. Tj knew what he was looking for in evaluating a textbook, and he knew where to find it. This difference could be vital because the great importance placed on textbooks in language education (e.g. Cunningsworth 1984; Hutchinson and Torres 1994) means that teachers need to know how to evaluate textbooks efficiently and effectively.

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