Materials development in TESOL has been gaining popularity as a field of study for the last few decades. TESOL materials research as an area of inquiry includes studies focusing on textbook content (e.g., grammar, cultural representation, and authenticity), consumption (use/adaptation of materials by learners and teachers), and production (design…

This article deals with the study of natural sciences in non-compulsory secondary education from the end of the nineteenth century until the educational reform in 1970. We begin with a critical review of the ways in which the secondary education curriculum and textbooks of this period conveyed established knowledge about natural sciences. We then…

There is at present much focus in ELT on describing and promoting teacher and learner agency. However, ELT as a professional field is concurrently characterised by an increasing orientation toward authoritative texts, particularly those imbued with authority at the transnational level. Global textbooks are a notable example, since they, along with…

This Instructors Perspectives' essay from Robert Blake initiates a discussion on publishing language textbooks. It is followed by responses from Annamaria Bellezza, Nikolaus Euba, and Mark Kaiser.

This study aimed to investigate the statuses on the publishing and usage of college biochemistry textbooks in China. A textbook database was constructed and the statistical analysis was adopted to evaluate the textbooks. The results showed that there were 945 (~57%) books for theory teaching, 379 (~23%) books for experiment teaching and 331 (~20%)…

This paper analyses the process of production and regulation of school textbooks in Poland under communist rule. The stages of textbook approval were as follows: selection of authors; editorial work at the publishing house; discussions in the commissions of the Ministry of Education; decisions of the censorship office. It is argued that the Polish…

College students living at or below the poverty line often have difficult choices to make: buy groceries, pay rent, or purchase textbooks. To Eric Frank, cofounder of Flat World Knowledge, this is not really a choice. When it comes to eating or buying a textbook, most will choose to eat. According to Frank, the biggest barrier to learning on scale…

Basals have played an important role in classroom instruction for almost 200 years. Historically, basal programs have been influenced by both important research and policy reports. This study analyzed one publishing company's basal program across seven editions in order to trace the interaction of research, policy, and publication. Teacher's…

This paper assesses the performance of the "National Textbook Development and Distribution Policy for Pre-Tertiary Education" of 2002. It examines the policy in theory and in practice by exploring the extent to which the liberalisation of the textbook trade has helped to improve on textbook procurement, production and distribution,…

The print publishing industry is showing signs of recovering from the worst of the economic downturn even as the surge in popularity of ebooks raises questions about the future of printed materials. From a high of 190,502 titles in 2007, overall American book title output fell to 178,841 in 2009 but climbed back to 186,344 in 2010; preliminary…

The Common Core State Standards' emphasis on informational text arose in part from research suggesting that employers and college instructors found students weak at comprehending technical manuals, scientific and historical journals, and other texts pivotal to work in those arenas. The common core's vision of informational text includes literary…

With the cost of college said to be escalating at double the rate of inflation, parents and students have voiced frustration, some think unreasonably, about textbook prices. In 2007, higher-education publishers continued to grapple with price resistance to textbooks and competition from the used-book market. This article reports that…

Students still obtain most educational content through textbooks and other printed materials. But as technology has changed, they are able to gain access to more of that content digitally, and often illegally. As textbook costs have increased, students have begun scanning and illegally sharing books over peer-to-peer file-sharing networks to save…

In January 2003, "College English" published a special issue that focused on the genre of creative nonfiction. Many of the articles centered specifically on the role of nonfiction in the composition classroom, and in her essay "Suddenly Sexy: Creative Nonfiction Rear-Ends Composition," Wendy Bishop claims that the genre of creative nonfiction has…

Professors select readings for their students in different forms: printed matter, including books and journals; print-on-demand texts; and online material. Before long, enough books and articles will be available for downloading onto devices like the Sony Reader and Amazon.com's new Kindle to make that format another option. They consider a wide…