Session Information
Contribution
The subject textbook has been studied and described by amongst others Michael Apple (Apple 1991 and John Dewey (Dewey 1966). However, as yet little attention has actually been paid tothis artefact in use and to its role in definingwhose culture is taught and learned and what the mechanisms of this process are. By ethnographically studying the use of textbooks in everyday educational interchanges we contribute insight into these processes based on an investigation of the use, content and effects of subject textbooks in mathematics in the subject studies education in pre-service mathematics education courses.
Dewey and then later Apple regarded textbooks as instruments for the moral regulation of (subordinated) individuals (i.e. pupils) in the struggle by powerful groups to build political and cultural accord within various levels of society. This political, economic, ideological or cultural power, they also noted, was exerted by dominant groups over others regardless of the explicit consent of the latter. This has also been suggested by amongst others Judy Trecker (Trecker 1973) and in de Castell et al (eds) (1989). However, as these authors also note, the curriculum of the school and other education institutions – like the university and its teacher education programmes (Beach 1995, 1997, 1999, 2000) - does not represent neutral knowledge, so textbooks are also potential sites of popular resistance toward the interests underlying official knowledge with a potential for developing alternative ideas and ideologies (Stubbs 1996). What comes to count as legitimate knowledge is the result of complex powerrelations, struggles, and compromises among different classed,raced, gendered, and religious groups around the messages, values, implicit ideologies and recognized possibilities in educational texts (Trecker 1973, Apple 1992).
In our work we approached textbooks as embodiments of a largerprocess of cultural politics by focusing on their content, their use, their effects and also the politics of how students actually create meanings around texts, in everyday educational encounters and practices (Bernstein 1990). As Michael Apple has argued (1992), what counts as legitimate knowledge in textbooks, is a question of whose knowledge is counted as most worthy and is often the result of complex power relations and struggles. Four specific questions are addressed. We hope their analysis will have implications for future policy. The questions are:
1. How are subject textbooks used as mediational tools in subject teaching?
2. How are they handled by students and what meanings and understandings are generated about subjects, subject knowledge and knowledge generally?
3. What is the relationship between the written text of the textbook and other aspects of educational content such as lectures and examinations for instance?
4. What are the implications for professional learning as a teacher and future curriculum development in teacher education of the answers to the above questions?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Apple, M. W. (1991) The Politics of the Textbook. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (1992) The text and Cultural Politics. Educational Researcher, 21(7), 4-19. Beach, D. (1995). Making sense of the problem of change: an ethnographic study of a teacher education reform. (Göteborg Studies in Educational Sciences 100). Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Beach, D. (1997). Symbolic control and power relay: Learning in higher professional education. (Göteborg Studies in Educational Sciences 119). Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Beach, D. (1999). Alienation and Fetish in Science Education, Scandinavian Journal of Education Research, 43(2): 157 - 172. Beach, D. (2000). Continuing problems of teacher education reform, Scandinavian Journal of Education Research, 44(3): 275 – 291. Berner, B. Callewaert, S. & Silberbrandt, H. (1977) Skola, ideologi och samhälle. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. Bernstein, B. (1990) Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 4: The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse. London: Routledge.De Castell, S., Luke, A. and Luke, C. (1989) Language, authority, and criticism: readings on the school textbook. London Falmer Press. Dewey, J. (1966) Democray and Education. New York: Free Press. Stubbs, M. (1996) Text and Corpus Analysis: Computer Assisted Studies of Language and Culture. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Säljö, R. (2000). Lärande i praktiken. Stockholm: Prisma. Trecker, J. L. (1973) Women in US history high school textbooks, International Review of Education, 19(1), 133-139.
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