Teachers as textbook evaluators: an

Interdisciplinary Checklist
Francisco Gomes de Matos

The age and influence of textbooks

According to Random House Webster’s College Dictionary (1997) the first

written occurrences of the word ‘textbook’ in English seem to have been from
1770 to 1780. Universally, that key concept has an older history, as can be
illustrated by the fact that in 1658 the great Czech educator Jan Amos
Komensky (John Comenius, in English), published his pioneering textbook
Orbis Sensualium Pictus (The Visible World) which became universalized,
having been translated into 14 languages.

Variously defined, as for example, "Textbook — a book used for instructional

purposes, especially in schools and colleges" (Harris and Hodges, 1995), books
used by students for particular branches of study can be characterized by
another important feature: their intrinsically challenging nature. Thus, in the
introductory part of her innovative ESL textbook, Price-Machado (1998)
acknowledges that "the development of a textbook is a long and complex
process, and many individuals contribute along the way". Whether considered
as an autonomous creation or as a component, the truth of the matter is that the
textbook is still seen as central to teaching-learning by the majority of teachers
in most if not all national educational systems. In our EFL universe, this is very
much true, as can be easily documented by an examination of ELT Publishers’
Catalogues. Investments on ELT textbook design and sales/adoption/promotion
keep increasing at a phenomenal pace as Expositions in EFL Conventions
clearly show.

If textbooks are to be celebrated for their age — some of them for their longevity
— and for their challenge to human minds (of authors and users) — how much
attention has been given to helping learners become knowledgeable users of
textbooks? A noteworthy attempt at exploring what I would call ‘learners’ rights
as textbook users’ is Adams (1989), a textbook designed to help minimal-
proficiency-level learners of English become acquainted with the organization,
functions and even selected aspects of "textbook discourse". That highly
(in)formative textbook on textbooks provides clear guidance on such important
activities as how to interpret illustrations, to learn how authors organize and
present ideas, how (discourse) markers are used for expressing sequencing,
exemplifying, resuming, concluding, and how to recognize integration of
information within and across topics.

Teachers as textbook evaluators

Significant advances have been taking place in Teacher Education/Training

Programs, as can be seen in specialized ELT-focused literature on Education,
Psychology, Applied Linguistics, Cultural and Visual Studies and Technology, to
name but a few of the contributory fields. Such progress notwithstanding, what
has been achieved in the preparation/training of teachers as textbook/materials
evaluators? Why has such strategic decision-making area been overlooked,
even neglected in many — (most ?) - Teacher Education Programs? Possibly
because of the highly complex nature of the cognitive operations involved and
due to the weight of an Evaluation Tradition centered on what could be labeled
as (predominantly) Monodisciplinary Evaluation Models. Such practices led to
the formulation of Checklists in which typical key-questions to be answered by a
textbook user would include: Who is it for? What is its approach or underlying
educational philosophy? What are its components? Does it have an easy-to-use
format/layout? What does the methodology of the author(s) emphasize? What
innovative activities are there?

As teacher Education Programs started emphasizing the need for teachers to

diversify their professional knowledge by capitalizing on insights from several
fields, explorations were made in Multidisciplinary Textbook Evaluation.

Two possibly pioneering examples are Gomes de Matos (1983 and 1992). The
former Checklist was commissioned by UNESCO and aimed at helping native
language educators assess materials - especially textbooks — produced in
developing countries. The latter Checklist, a slightly updated 1983 model, was
written for an introductory chapter in a pioneering volume on Evaluation in
Language Teaching (Helbo, 1992).

Multidisciplinary Evaluation Checklist: Key-questions

In Gomes de Matos (1992), 12 key-questions (reflecting key-concepts) were

used, drawn on such fields as Anthropology, Arts, Cross-cultural
Communication, Education, Linguistics, Literature, Native language
methodology, Peace Education, Politics, Psychology, and Sociology. Two
examples of those key-questions are:

 (From Peace Education) — Does the textbook contribute to sensitizing

its users as peace-loving human beings and as promoters of a world-
peace consciousness?
 (From intercultural Communication) — Does the textbook enhance the
importance of being cross-culturally oriented, of loving one’s cultural and
linguistic "neighbor", to apply the Biblical saying?

Teachers (in groups, at their schools, in Seminar Workshops, etc) are urged to
exercise their right to create multidisciplinary evaluation checklists as
preparatory decision-making for taking on another cognitive challenge, namely
that of applying key-concepts across ESL/EFL and other curricular
subjects/disciplines.

A terminological note is in order here: although the terms ‘multidisciplinary’ and

‘interdisciplinary’ may often be found in the literature as if they were
synonymous, rigorously speaking the semantic distinction inherent in the
prefixes ‘multi-’ and ‘inter-’ should be adhered to, if we are to become
interdisciplinarians. It is also well to clarify that a third term, ‘transdisciplinary’
(and its derived form ‘transdisciplinarity’) is being used as interchangeable with
‘interdisciplinary’, but it actually conveys a going well beyond disciplines or
exploring human knowledge free from the constraints, restrictions, and
limitations of disciplinary boundaries. It is my conviction and hope that our
interdisciplinary creativity will lead us to a truly holistic, transdisciplinary and
above all, deeply humanizing knowledge, particularly so as evaluators of
colleagues’ textbooks.

A plea for interdisciplinary evaluation

Recently, I was asked to conduct an interdisciplinary Workshop for high school

teachers, representing 8 subjects, English and Portuguese included. By sharing
exciting challenging experience in how to "interdisciplinarize" key-concepts, I
realized that instead of going straight to the design of an interdisciplinary
checklist, a logical, preparatory action would be that of the larger group (then
groups of teachers from particular school subjects) selecting what they would
consider to be key interdisciplinary concepts and justifying their selection.
Interestingly, the concepts of "language" and "creation" came up as the two
most frequently chosen. Given the limitations of space here, I can but exemplify
one type of mini-checklist aimed at probing a concept interdisciplinarily. The
key-concept is that of identity, which is inherently interdisciplinary, that is,
shared by many fields such as Psychology, Sociology, Geography, Politics,
Culture Studies, Linguistics, etc. By including such concept in a Checklist, key-
questions to be asked would be: Does the textbook help enhance the learner’s
psychological, social, physical, linguistic, (inter) cultural, national, ecological,
geographical, spiritual IDENTITY? How? To what extent? How can such
interdisciplinary application of a key-concept contribute to humanizing a
textbook for ESL/EFL students?

Other examples of potentially applicable and relevant interdisciplinary concepts

are: peace (and its sadly dehumanizing opposite, violence) interdependence,
system, value, variation (cf. its application in so many fields, along with variety),
democracy, citizenship, health. For suggestions on other central
interdisciplinary concepts see the insightful treatment for "Temas Transversais",
in the invaluable, inspiring series of Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais (MEC-
SEF — 1998/1999), especially the volume on Foreign Language Teaching
(Celani & Moita Lopes, 1998).

In short, may this brief text motivate and challenge you to improve, expand, and
deepen your competence as a textbook/materials evaluator. By doing so, you
will be doing your important share in helping make our profession’s creations —
especially textbooks — interdisciplinarily meaningful and above all, humanizing,
so we can be not only humanists but humanizers!

References

 Adams, Thomas W. (1989) Inside Textbooks. What students need to

know. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley
 Celani, M.A.A. and L.P. Moita Lopes ( 1998) Língua Estrangeira.
Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais, Brasília, DF.:
 ‘Evaluation and Language teaching’. Essays in Honor of Frans van
Passel. Bern: Peter Lang, pp. 19-24.
 Gomes de Matos, F (1992) "Evaluating Language Teaching Textbooks:
An Interdisciplinary Approach". In André Helbo (Ed)
 Gomes de Matos, F. (1983) A pluridisciplinary checklist for evaluating
mother-tongue mateirals in developing countries.
 Harris, T. And R. Hodges (Eds) (1995). ‘The Literacy Dictionary’. The
Vocabulary of Reading and Writing Newark: International
 Paris: UNESCO, Division of Structures, Contents and Methods of
Education
 Price-Machado.Donna (1998) Skills for Success. Working and Studying
in English. Cambridge University Press.
Searching for authentic materials
Daniel Droukis
First published in Issue 173, June/July 2003.

Before leaving on my trip back to the States I was really looking forward to
getting away from it all. I never expected that I would suddenly be obsessed
with the search for authentic materials. However, in planning the trip I started to
consider what I wanted to bring back to Japan. The list of things for the
classroom started getting longer than the personal items. So, before leaving I
listed all the materials I would try to look for. Nothing big, nothing heavy and
nothing expensive became the rule.

Where to look

First, I had to categorize what I wanted based on what I knew I could probably
find easily. The airport and plane of course are an excellent source of such
material. Among others on my 'shopping list' were; airport information guides
(San Francisco International Airport was a great resource, while my final
destination, Boston was not), menus (small shops inside shopping malls were
an excellent source of simple one page menus that you could take home and
could be easily used in the classroom). Not only were the proprietors willing to
have you take them, they also turned out be useful for in-class activities.
Information desks around the city offered a wide variety of information that was
free and could be used in classroom activities.

Finding something of interest to students

I have always thought that travel guides helped make my classroom activities
more interesting. Travel guides that you had to buy here in Japan will cost you a
lot but the information desks in Boston had a free booklet called Panorama
which listed activities, movies, theater and sports along with maps and
schedules which turned out to cause a lot of excitement in my junior college
classes as students asked about movies that looked interesting or concerts
featuring singers they knew or liked. This even had a small section in foreign
languages, including Japanese, which the students thought was really funny.
They enjoyed explaining what the Japanese said. (I didn¹t tell them that I had a
translation of it on another page.) They turned out to be good translators.

Since traveling is a major activity I felt that students could benefit from
schedules and maps that were readily available. The MBTA (Massachusetts
Bay Transportation Authority) provides you with small schedules that can be
easily used in the classroom. Along with this route maps for the trains and
subways give the students the visual stimulus they need to ask questions and
practice real-life situations.
Movie theaters proved to be a great resource as a few had information sheets
on what movies were playing along with explanations of the ratings system and
a synopsis of the movies scheduled. The signs in the lobby of the movie theater
provided a variety of information but as I quickly learned never take pictures
inside a movie theater lobby. I wanted a picture of the snack bar signs but was
quickly told by a security guard that this activity is strictly forbidden. He was
stunned when I told him why I was taking the picture. Aside from the problems I
had, the material on movie ratings and explanations of the upcoming movies
helped make several lessons a great success as the students were inspired to
ask a great many questions and showed a keen interest in understanding
something they were seeing for the first time.

People don't talk

Collecting the materials was not without its problems. Along with the trouble at
the movie theater there were other situations where people simply didn¹t talk! At
the front desk of my hotel in San Francisco the clerk just stared at me as I
approached. Any respectable English book sold in Japan would never offer up
this situation to students! Taxi drivers were not as chatty as we often believe
them to be. The ride from the airport to the train station was in silence. I told him
where I was going, he drove, he stopped, I looked at the meter, paid him, said
thanks and that was it. Not very conversational but would probably put my
students at ease if they thought they wouldn't need to engage in conversation
like that. While buying the train ticket I approached the counter and said, "One
way to Ipswich". He said, "Four fifty". I slipped the money into the slot below the
bulletproof glass, took my ticket and moved on. Flight attendants never said
more than a few words and when serving drinks did not even bother to speak,
as they simply arched their eyebrows as if to say, "What do you want?". I was
beginning to think that talking was really unnecessary.

Material overwhelming?

Among the materials I wanted were announcements that I heard. Unfortunately,

they were all in places where it was impossible to make tape recordings
because of airline rules or simply the noise. Therefore, I did a lot of
speedwriting. Telephone calls to airlines and movie theaters produced some
excellent material. Again, this could not be recorded so I was writing like a
madman. Students found these transcripts of airline announcements, telephone
and movie very interesting and it also helped me to remember that the speaking
speed the students encounter in America will be much faster than that which
they hear from me in my own classes or on taped material for EFL. The thought
of being confronted with this speed of language both interested and worried the
students. However, when they were given transcripts of some of the things I
heard they were relieved to find that the language used was not as complicated
as they had first feared. Of course, many materials I found would overwhelm
most students, especially those from official government sources. Since many
of my students are preparing for careers in the travel industry I want them to
have experience with a wide variety of material. By simply focusing on small
segments of airport guides, customs forms, menus etc. the students need to
focus for shorter periods of time thus making the material less threatening in the
classroom.

Difficult to acquire

Two types of material were very difficult to acquire. First, a hotel registration
form was very difficult as the few hotels I asked (including ones I stayed at)
refused to part with this valuable material; however a more aggressive family
member was able to secure one very easily. The second difficulty was in a
hospital. I didn¹t want to be a nuisance in such a place but I felt that a hospital
registration form might be useful for students. Living in a small town was helpful
here as another family member simply called a friend at the nearest hospital
and I had my registration form.

Conclusion

While the collection of materials took up part of my vacation it was an exercise

that yielded wonderful results. I tried to plan what I would look for in advance
but in fact simply in the process of enjoying my vacation I was coming across a
great deal of material for the classroom. All that was needed was to take the
time to gather it, put it away for safe keeping, get it back to Japan in one piece
and of course fit it in my suitcase.

You should always be on the lookout for materials. The best places to find
materials in Boston were at shopping malls which had interesting and useful
advertisements, floor guides, directory information and other shopping
materials, banks which had a variety of forms requiring information that students
may need to convey at some point in their lives. Small shops such as sandwich
shops, coffee shops etc. often had paper menus that you could take with you.
These were often very simple but with enough language to grab the interest of
even my junior high school students (although this was the only authentic
material I have exposed this age group to). Employment applications were also
readily available and these too require the students to understand and offer
information. Sports programs, such as from an American baseball game
attracted the interest of many of the boys and even got the quieter students to
ask about players or other things they found here.

There are many more possible sources of material for our classrooms, and I
hope that many more teachers will take the time and the minimal extra effort
needed to help make their classrooms more inviting to the students through
authentic materials.