Gilbert A. Valverde

Translating Policy into Practice

The opportunities to learn experienced by students in classrooms around the world are the result of both cultural forces that permeate the society of which the educational system is a part, and of specific educational policies. Though mindful of the many forces affecting the results of their efforts, decision makers in educational systems are continuously confronted with the question of which educational opportunities are to be provided to which students, within constraints that are social, cultural, economic and political. Definition of these opportunities and the provisions for delivering them to students result from social and political processes of decision- making that vary from nation to nation. Resulting instruments — statements of content standards — detailing goals are necessarily also varied. However, all nations confront two fundamental challenges.

Textbook Expectations for Performance

Textbooks not only put forward the content students are to learn but they also advocate what students should be able to do with that content. Textbook developers do not intend to simply convey information, but to encourage behaviors on the part of students. This book is about the structure and pedagogy of textbooks by which they do so. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 examine aspects of structure while this chapter has more direct implications for pedagogy and style.

Physical Features of Textbooks

Textbooks around the world differ greatly in size, length, and other structural features. They also vary in the types of chapters and units they contain and in the ways they are laid out. There are also notable differences in sequencing and complexity as one examines closely the presentation of the mathematics and science topics.

A Holistic View of Textbooks

In the preceding chapters, we have examined a set of characteristics that describe textbook structure and pedagogy to help understand how textbooks from across the world vary on these dimensions. Previous work has established that these same books differ in their content profiles. The hypothesis here is that form and style are potentially important in that they can influence the degree to which the content profile is taught by teachers and learned by students.

Textbooks and Educational Opportunity

Attending school dominates the lives of most children around the world. Much evidence indicates that their specific schooling experiences vary considerably from country to country. There is evidence that they even vary among schools and among classrooms in the same country. However, within this variety there are parts of the school setting so common as to be virtually universal. Textbooks are one such element. Perhaps only students and teachers themselves are a more ubiquitous element of schooling than textbooks. As such a central facet of schooling, understanding textbooks is essential to understanding the learning opportunities provided in educational systems around the world.