Arthur Woodward

Evolution and Creationism in High School Textbooks

Arthur Woodward David L. Elliott Arthur Woodward is a research associate at the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the Univ. of Rochester, Lattimore 302, Rochester, NY 14627. He previously was a research associate and program administrator at the Teachers College of Columbia Univ. Woodward is a former program chair and chair of the AERA Special Interest Groups on Textbooks, Textbook Publication and Schools. He earned his B.Sc. in Sociology from the Univ. of London, his M.Ed. from the Univ. of Massachusetts at Amherst and his Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies from the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana. David L. Elliott, codirector of Educational Materials Associates in Berkeley, California, is a former director of the Western Projects Office of the EPIE Institute and a former faculty member of the School of Education of the Univ. of California at Berkeley. He earned his B.A. from Oberlin College and his M.A. and Ed.D. from the Teachers College at Columbia Univ.

Selecting social studies textbooks

Because dissatisfaction with textbooks usually arises from issues of content and philosophy, we would expect those who select elementary social studies texts to focus on these issues. This article reports on a study of the instruments used to evaluate elementary social studies texts in thirty-three school districts. The study found the process to be haphazard and the general instruments to be poorly formulated. Instruments created specifically for evaluating social studies materials were better focused.