Teachers and Textbooks: Materials Use in Four Fourth-Grade Classrooms

Studies of 4 fourth-grade teachers in 2 urban schools in a single school district provide the data for this article. Questions about the roles textbooks play in elementary education and how they come to play those roles were addressed using an ecologically based research approach (interviews and cla...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Elementary school journal 1993-01, Vol.93 (3), p.249-275
Main Authors: Sosniak, Lauren A., Stodolsky, Susan S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Basal reading
Case Studies
Elementary School Curriculum
Elementary School Mathematics
Elementary School Teachers
Elementary schools
Grade 4
Instructional Materials
Intermediate Grades
Language teachers
Mathematics education
Mathematics materials
Reading
Reading Instruction
Reading materials
Social Studies
Teacher Attitudes
Teacher Behavior
Teacher Thinking
Teachers
Teaching Conditions
Textbooks
Workbooks
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Summary:Studies of 4 fourth-grade teachers in 2 urban schools in a single school district provide the data for this article. Questions about the roles textbooks play in elementary education and how they come to play those roles were addressed using an ecologically based research approach (interviews and classroom observations)-one that considered teachers' thought and action and the relationships between these, teachers' work within and across subjects, and the fuller context of teachers' conditions of work. Using this approach, we found that the influence of textbooks on classroom instruction and teachers' thinking was somewhat less than the literature would have us expect, that patterns of textbook use and thinking about these materials were not necessarily consistent across subjects even for a single teacher, and that the conditions of elementary teachers' work encouraged selective and variable use of textbook materials.
ISSN:0013-5984
1554-8279
DOI:10.1086/461725