TEAC 801 Curriculum Inquiry

Analyzing Textbooks as Curriculum

As you do your curriculum analysis, you will be responding to the questions posed in Posner on pp. 20-22. In particular, you should be sure that your written analysis contains information responding to the following questions.

Curriculum Documentation (Ch. 1):

  • What textbook have you chosen to analyze (name, authors, publisher, year)?
  • What were you able to find out about the background of your textbook?
  • To what social, economic, political, or educational problem was the curriculum attempting to respond?
  • What are the limitations of the textbook documentation?

Cast of Characters (Ch. 2):

  • Who made up the cast of characters for the development of your textbook?
  • Who represented the learners, the teachers, the subject matter, and the milieu?
  • Is there a perspective you think is missing? Explain.

Theoretical Perspectives (Ch. 3):

  • What theoretical perspective(s) does your textbook represent? Explain your answer.
  • Traditional
  • Experiential
  • Structure of the Disciplines
  • Behavior
  • Constructivist
  • Several of the above
  • None of the above

Curriculum Purpose & Content (Ch. 4-5):

“…if we were to consider knowledge useful only to the extent that we use it in the same way that we learn it, then much of the knowledge we acquire in school would be useless” (Posner, 2004, p. 70).

Consider the ideas of training vs. education (p. 70), and within education, content vs. process.

  • Where does your textbook fit into this picture?

Posner asks the hypothetical question: “How much of schooling and what proportion of each subject should we conceive of as education, and how much should we conceive of as training?” (p. 71)

  • How does your textbook’s view compare to your view of these “shoulds”?
  • What types of learning objective are included in your textbook (thinking both of the 5 theoretical perspectives and of content vs. process)?
  • To what extent are process objectives present? Or, are process objectives part of the null curriculum of your textbook?
  • How does your textbook represent the nature of mathematics to students?
  • Is this representation of mathematics congruent with your own understanding of the nature of mathematics?
  • To what extent is your textbook aligned with:
  • Nebraska State Standards?
  • NCTM Principles & Standards?
  • NCTM Focal Points?
  • Common Core State Standards?

Curriculum Organization (Ch. 6-7):

  • What organizational principles does the textbook employ?
  • Is there a role for technology in the textbook?
  • Does the textbook organization increase or decrease the likelihood that tracking will be used?
  • What assumptions about teaching, learning, knowledge, content structure, and organizational structure underlie the textbook’s organization?

Frame Factors & Curriculum Implementation (Ch. 8-9):

  • What are the temporal requirements of the textbook (time needed)?
  • What are the physical requirements of the textbook (materials)?
  • What are the organizational requirements of the textbook (student groupings)?
  • What are the political-legal requirements of the textbook (standards)?
  • What values are embedded in the textbook (culture)?
  • To what extent will the textbook be consistent with and appropriate for the teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and competencies?
  • To what extent does the textbook take into account the students’ cultural, ethnic, or social backgrounds?
  • What technologies are required to implement the textbook?
  • If you participated in your curriculum, what approaches characterized the change efforts?

Evaluation and Curriculum (Ch. 10-11):

  • What instruments or suggestions for collecting data on student learning does the curriculum provide?
  • Does the approach to student evaluation in the curriculum represent a measurement-based or an integrated approach, or both?
  • What are your concerns about the curriculum that could be clarified by evaluation data? Consider short-term outcomes, long-term outcomes, antecedents, and transactions.

Overall Strength (Ch. 12):

  • What are the strengths of the textbook?
  • What are the limitations of the textbook?
  • As a teacher using this textbook, what would one need to do to maximize the strengths and compensate for the weaknesses?

Thursday, July 1: Groups give a 15-20 minute report on their textbook analysis