Contemporary children must deal with many family problems that children 20 years ago never had to face, including divorce, parental separation, death, working mothers, and economic status. To determine how well current basal reading series reflect the changing American family, the stories of four basal reading series for grades four, five, and six…

Five seventh grade and four sixth grade social studies textbooks most commonly used in Michigan public schools were examined (1) to determine the extent to which these textbooks reflected the pluralistic nature of the global society, past and present, and (2) to ascertain the quality of scholarship, educational soundness, and readability levels.…

Because textbooks are essential instructional tools, they should play a major role in educational reform for excellence. Despite improvements in response to ethnic and women's movements, deterioration in textbook quality has occurred through competition for markets. Former Secretary of Education Terrel Bell observed in 1984 that educators should…

An analysis of the lexical content of four recently published textbooks for college-level introductory German is presented. The study investigated the extent to which the materials prepare students for the intermediate level, as cited in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages' (ACTFL's) proficiency guidelines. The lexical items…

The final report of the project that concentrated on the expository language found in content-area textbooks begins with an overview of the project, including rationale, significance, and goals. These goals were to (1) describe how high school students and their teachers used their textbooks, (2) describe and analyze the nature of expository…

Analyses of elementary and secondary social studies textbooks, supplementary materials, and teacher resource materials, all published in 1983, 1984, and 1985, are presented. The objective is to provide analyses of curriculum materials that will allow K-12 teachers, administrators, curriculum coordinators, and college methods teachers to select…

Working on the theory that intonation miscues caused by confusion over punctuation and other phrase boundaries will make the apprehension of text more difficult than necessary for young developing readers, a study reviewed the research and literature relevant to the effects of location of punctuation, phrasing, and line breaks in text and on the…

Students from 16 different vocational/technical areas of study in seven postsecondary complexes in Mississippi (representing a cross-section of all junior colleges in the State) were administered the Nelson-Denny Reading Test to identify reading levels. The FORCAST readability formula (Klare, 1974) was used to determine the readability level of…

The Tulsa, Oklahoma, board of education has adopted as policy an academic freedom statement that was developed by a committee composed of board members, administrators, teachers, and librarians. The prelude to the statement contains six important points dealing with (1) the need for such a policy statement, (2) school responsibility, (3)…

Techniques are provided for distinguishing explanative information from other types of information in science prose, including the structural method, the logical method, and the empirical method. Research is then provided concerning techniques which increase the subjects' recall of explanative information, and thus the subject's problem solving…

To determine whether elementary reading textbooks from a socialist country contained less sex-role stereotyping than previously-studied United States readers, an analysis of 374 books from the German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.) was undertaken. A sex bias index was calculated for both the G.D.R. and the U.S. books by finding the average difference…

The 10 guidelines in this guide to analyzing children's books serve as a starting point for evaluating children's literature from the perspective of racist and sexist attitudes. (1) Check the illustrations. Look for stereotypes, for tokenism, and for who's doing what. (2) Check the story lines. Look for subtle forms of bias in such approaches as…

Open University faculty create their own instructional materials for use in distance teaching. A methodology is described for evaluating the teaching effectiveness of the materials and the teaching methods used. It is applied to a unit of a materials science course written for a specific text. A small group of students in the course was surveyed…

BROUGHT TOGETHER HERE IS THE WIDELY-SCATTERED LITERATURE ON SELF-INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAMS AND DEVICES BY LEADERS, PAST AND PRESENT, IN THEIR DEVELOPMENT. S.L. PRESSEY IN HIS ARTICLES DESCRIBES THE APPARATUS, METHODS, THEORY, AND RESULTS ATTENDANT UPON USE OF HIS TEST-SCORING DEVICES. B.F. SKINNER IN HIS ARTICLES DEVELOPS THEORY, DESCRIBES MACHINES,…

This report evaluates the treatment of Aisa in American elementary and secondary school textbooks. The study was undertaken by the Asia Society. Guided by a detailed questionnaire, 103 scholars, teachers, and others with Asian expertise reviewed 306 books commonly used in the 50 states during 1974-75. This book summarizes the process of…