National standards, foundation mathematics and Illinois community colleges: Textbooks and faculty as the keepers of content

Many developmental-remedial mathematics faculty and students are dependent on textbooks as the primary source for content, expectation for student performance, and pedagogy. Thus, learning opportunity is linked to the type and quality of the textbook, not just the faculty (McKnight et al., 1987; Schmidt, McKnight, Valverde, Houang, & Wiley, 1997; Valverde, Bianchi, Wolfe, Schmidt, & Houang, 2002). This study has two purposes.;Phase 1 addressed two questions: can textbooks be categorized by pedagogical intent; and, how many and which textbooks can be categorized by intent into pedagogical frames: habituation, enculturation and construction? The conceptual framework was adapted from Kirshners' crossdisciplinary framework (Kirshner, 2002; Valverde et al., 2002). Three developmental-remedial faculty categorized all textbooks. All textbooks commonly used in Illinois during the Fall of 2003 categorized as habituation while textbooks originally developed and supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) categorized as enculturation or construction.;Phase 2 compared seven habituation textbooks where their authors accounted for approximately 70% of all developmental-remedial textbooks; three enculturation textbooks; and two construction textbooks. An adapted Conger (1996) instrument was developed and then used by three Illinois mathematics faculty knowledgeable both of developmental-remedial textbooks and the American Mathematics Association of Two-Year Colleges' standards document to rate textbooks. They rated each textbook for alignment with the AMATYC standards document. The data were analyzed to investigate the overall standards alignment of each category of textbook. Each category was also analyzed for standards alignment with the three standards: content, expectation for student performance and pedagogy.;Habituation textbooks were not aligned with standards; while textbooks derived from NSF curriculum projects were substantially aligned. Conclusions, implications, recommendations for practice and research included: only one Illinois college used an AMATYC standards aligned textbook; implementation of standards-based textbooks require faculty development; propose revising the Illinois Mathematics and Computer Articulation Guide to reflect standards; pedagogy is the clearest indicator of standards alignment; no textbook is completely aligned with AMATYC standards for content; need for creation of a community college foundations mathematics research agendum; development of standards-based assessments; national replication of study; and P-16 policy meta-analysis of mathematics education research.