This document reports on an investigation focusing on how the content of introductory college psychology texts' content related to physical attractiveness and self-esteem. The primary objective of this study was to review how recently published life-span developmental texts present physical development in middle childhood as related to traditional…

Results on content-oriented national assessment tests have demonstrated that many secondary school students in the United States are culturally illiterate. E. D. Hirsch has compiled a list of 4,500 terms, dates, phrases, and sayings that he argues represents the broad knowledge base that culturally literate U.S. citizens should possess. Twelve…

A new awareness of the importance of understanding Canada has made its way to U.S. public school classrooms. Canada and the Canadian-U.S. relationship have joined the spectrum of countries featured in the U.S. curriculum. As a response to this development, an investigation of leading textbooks used in U.S. classrooms was undertaken to examine the…

The content of elementary school reading methods textbooks spanning approximately 100 years was analyzed to note patterns of emphasis for selected topics. Four to six books were chosen for analysis from each of six time periods: 1890 to 1930, and each of the decades from the 1940s to the 1980s. Each book was evaluated with a checklist of 17 major…

Social Studies textbooks from grades 1-4 published by Macmillan (1985), Scott Foresman (1986), and Silver Burdett & Ginn (1988) were selected for review to assess the position given by these books to geographic place vocabulary. Each was evaluated on the basis of frequency and continuity of places named, the attention to stressing place name…

Procedures and findings of a recent introductory psychology textbook selection effort at 4-year liberal arts undergraduate institution are presented. The following sequential steps were taken: (1) identification of introductory texts for consideration; (2) design of an evaluation form for reviewing targeted books; and (3) collection and analysis…

In the past, science textbooks have been the target of criticism by educators and feminists in studies of sex bias in education. The purpose of this study was to develop a useful tool that could be used in formative or summative evaluation of the level of sexism in science textbooks and as a research tool to study the effect of sexist…

A model for developing instructional analogies was used to produce experimental treatments that included text from a high school biology textbook to which was added extended verbal analogies written by the researcher linking each of two biology concepts to analogous familiar concepts. The control treatment was text from the biology textbook…

Most secondary science courses in North America are designed to use textbooks as the primary or exclusive source of information about the content or processes of science, and most science teachers focus their instruction on a single text. Although there are many serious issues raised by the overwhelming reliance on text-based teaching/learning in…

A study was undertaken to develop an evaluation procedure that could be used to analyze the cognitive requirements of instructional materials used to teach beginning reading. The study involved four phases. The first phase, an examination of the literature in order to create a basis for the development of assessment procedures, included an…

Research on changing attitudes toward parenthood among college students was expanded to include a study of textbooks to determine if they were reflective of the changes. A sample of 980 undergraduate female home economics students in four universities in the Midwest and West Coast areas were involved in this decade retesting of Maxwell and…

English as a Second Language (ESL) composition textbooks were compared with freshman composition textbooks through a national survey of U.S. universities. A detailed content analysis of nine ESL and eighteen English composition texts was conducted. A questionnaire was sent to selected universities asking the faculty to answer textbook-related…

This supplemental report concludes the analysis of data collected in response to a request by the Eugene (Oregon) school board for an assessment of reading instruction in the school district. The first section of the report examines materials and recordkeeping within the schools. Specifically it states what materials are used and how teachers rate…

This is a summary of a report investigating the way verb forms are treated in four audiovisual or audiolingual methods (textbooks) for the teaching of introductory English as a second language. The methods under investigation are: (1) "Methode Audio-visuelle d'Anglais, 1," Filipovic; (2) "My Friend Tony--Pratique Audio-Orale des Structures, "…

The Oregon Vo-Tech Math Project is designed to provide verbal problem sets for use in vocational education programs in secondary schools and community colleges. A subset of the problem booklets was subjected to evaluation in 12 secondary schools and 7 community colleges in an effort to make the materials more meaningful to students, improve…