Two of our research objectives were (a) to identify effective science teaching and learning strategies, models and methods, and (b) to measure how science students’ books support and inspire teachers and students to apply these most effective pedagogies. The first objective requires a large scope of good quality knowledge from educational science and the practice of textbook analysis. Therefore, we decided on conducting a systematic and large-scale search of available literature. Limitation was the restricted number of hard-copy and online subscriptions to peer-reviewed publications available from our institution. The major source of publications we used were online journals and freely available book sections. Lists of bibliographies were generated by Google Scholar, ERIC and ProQuest. Out of 16664 peer reviewed articles we used a partly targeted, partly randomized sample of 767 items, taking the ranking features of search engines into account. For designing the coding manual and evaluation tool, our group examined international examples of textbook evaluation/accreditation manuals, such as Hungarian, German, Hong Kong Chinese and from the IEA. The literature review also involved around a hundred further publications, using a more traditional approach by looking for the primary sources of most cited and referenced literature both printed and electronic. With respect to systematic online search, we adopted methods from the practice of systematic reviews. Concept matrices, Boolean and further search operators were used. Inclusion criteria amongst others were being a systematic review, meta-analysis or large-scale study, being peer-reviewed, containing quantitative results on effects, being conducted in relation to teaching science on secondary level (preferably 10 to 14-year-olds) and being published since 2000. As one of the results, we have compiled a structured list of upper primary/lower secondary science pedagogies which are proven to raise performance in various cultural and social contexts. In relation to how textbooks can support teaching and learning process, we identified the following aspects to be evaluated: (2.1) constructing new concepts, (2.2) the optimal balance of whole class teaching and different forms of independent/collaborative work (including experiments), (2.3) expected levels of thinking, (2.4) approaches to assessing acquired knowledge, (2.5) not domain-specific skills improvement and (2.6) techniques to indicate metacognition. I put emphasis on the learning and teaching dimension in this presentation, because the rest four (content, structure and organization, language and layout) are to contribute to the success of the former one.

Dárdai, Ágnes (2000): ‘Az összehasonlító tankönyvkutatás nemzetközi tapasztalatai.’ in Educatio Vol. 4 pp. 498-508. Mikk, Jaan (2000): Textbook: Research and Writing. Frankfurt: Peter Lang GmbH. Scheerens, J. (2004) ‘Review of school and instructional effectiveness research’. Available at: https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/5139875.