The first purpose of a high school course in U.S. history must be to help students understand the essence of democracy and those events, institutions, and forces that have either promoted or obstructed it. This review examines five textbooks and analyzes how useful they are in aiding that process, and how they might be made more helpful. The five…

Presented are critical reviews of 18 biology textbooks submitted for consideration by the Texas State Board of Education during 1984. These reviews are provided in three categories: (1) general biology textbooks: "Biology and Human Progress"--Prentice Hall; "Scott, Foresman Life Science"--Scott, Foresman; "Living Things"--Holt, Rinehart, and…

This report describes a project which analyzed science and social studies textbooks to determine how well they accommodate the learning needs of mainstreamed hard-to-teach students. A textbook analysis tool was developed, and eight teacher-reviewers examined the instructional design of teachers' and students' editions of 12 leading elementary and…

The failure of history textbooks to teach about ordinary people and events is examined, and what teachers can do to overcome this shortcoming of texts is discussed. History texts emphasize political history, wars, battles, and chronicles of great persons and events of the past. Scant attention is paid to the lives of ordinary men and women. This…

In a "College English" article, B. M. Kroll describes the educational and philosophical foundations of three perspectives on the teaching of writing: interventionism, maturationism, and interactionism. These three developmental perspectives offer a useful way of reviewing, evaluating, and classifying textbooks written for basic writers.…

Discusses how most study skills are not appropriate for reading social studies textbooks. Asserts that sophisticated readers of social studies textbooks use a nation schema to organize the information. Finally, provides specific instructions on how to use a nation schema to teach social studies. (SRT)

Reports on an analysis of 35 American management textbooks that identifies 17 core concepts for management courses for information professionals. Each concept--accountability, accounting, authority, budgeting, change/innovation/creativity, communication, controlling, decision making, delegation and organization, ethics, fiscal management,…

This brief report focuses on the cognitive level of decimal problems in 16 textbooks. Activities at the application level are included, but seldom are higher-order intellectual behaviors found in the books. (MNS)

Textbooks should be selected to meet the needs of students and teachers. Making "a deal" can, in the long run, lead to textbooks that are more expensive and of poorer quality. Five ways to improve textbook selection are suggested. Some publishers' comments are included. (MLF)

Describes a study conducted to determine prevalence of educational software field testing by producers, number of teachers and students participating, evaluation criteria used, whether documentation includes field test results, field test value, and other evaluation methods utilized during product development. Textbook versus software evaluation,…

Presents a set of "neutral" language guidelines as a way of pointing out the problems of using language guidelines in the first place. (JL)

Describes method of analysis of textbook indexes and bibliographies. Data can be used for studying the discipline, teaching, evaluating textbooks, and making administrative/personnel decisions. (Author/KC)

Answers questions most frequently asked about the cloze procedure; suggests using cloze exercises to gauge the suitability of reading materials, showing how the technique taps meaning derived from text and indexes both textual reading difficulty and students' comprehension ability. (AEA)

Investigates the types, frequency, and length of literature used in elementary social studies texts and teachers' manuals. Although some texts thoroughly integrated the literature into the main instruction, most relegated it to additional readings and bibliographies. Provides some useful guidelines for using literature in the social studies…

Evaluates the coverage of the Korean War in 12 high school history textbooks. Lists the books, and reviews the coverage of each in the areas of: total coverage and illustrations; Korean war background; causes of the War; the Truman response; waging the War; the Truman-MacArthur controversy; and the results of the War. (GG)