Criteria for evaluating structure in geography textbooks.
Date
1974
Authors
Dayton, John Gilman
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Abstract
One of the major problems confronting geography teachers in secondary schools is the selection of textbook materials from the wide range or books available. Mere specifically teachers require some criteria for selecting textbooks that reflect the nature of the field of geography. The purpose of this study was to derive a set of criteria useful in examining the geographic quality of textbooks, and then to apply these criteria to selected geography textbooks used in grades eight, nine and ten in British Columbia Schools.
The statements of prominent geographers concerning the nature of geography were analyzed to determine a set of fundamental concepts and a mode of inquiry common to all fields of geographic study. A representative sample of 34 geography textbooks was then selected from 177 principal textbooks in use in Scotland. These were examined to determine the most effective organizations of content, structures of learning activities, and qualities of geographic resource materials. Tentative conclusions regarding these were checked against the principles of geography teaching !n widely accepted manuals an geography instruction. From this process a set of criteria for each of three categories was derived: fundamental concepts, learning activities, and resource materials. The criteria of these categories were applied to the three prescribed and to nine randomly selected supplementary textbooks used in grades eight; nine and ten in British Columbia.
The analysis indicated that overall the British Columbia textbooks achieve a fair standard of quality. The prescribed textbooks are of uniformly higher geographic standard than those supplied as optional textbooks, and in no case did the prescribed textbooks show weakness in any of the major categories. The selected optional textbooks showed marked range in quality, thus demonstrating the need for an objective set of criteria for the use of the classroom teacher. Over one-half of them rated as weak or poor in quality while two of them were rated as good.
The conclusions of the stud:;y re that the three prescribed textbooks re wisely selected, and that the ratings of the selected optional textbooks indicate that among the optional textbooks there is a sizeable minority of above-average books available to geography teachers. The criteria themselves, deduced from the theoretical structure of the discipline of geography, clearly discriminated the different geographic qualities of the textbooks. This analysis of selected British Columbia textbooks demonstrated the three categories of criteria developed in the study would be useful to the classroom teacher.