Three Main Foreign Textbook Evaluation Methods And Their Comparative Study

Textbooks are concrete embodiments of teaching contents and they serve notonly as the basic thread for the studying behavior of students, but also applyas important basis for the teaching behavior of teachers. As main carrier ofteaching content, textbooks play a non-substitutable role in the curriculum inthe primary and secondary schools. The quality of texts and its implement effectswill influence the quality of whole curriculum greatly. In fact, the qualityissue of the curriculum in the primary and secondary schools can be materializedinto the quality issue of textbooks. The study of textbooks has developed intocore content of curriculum research. Researches on textbook evaluation methodshave distinct significance and values on curriculum reformation. However, inChina, the studies of textbook evaluation methods are still limited only on theexperience level in most cases and lack of systematic and deep knowledge, whichis an obstacle to improve textbook quality and curriculum reform. Therefore,this essay introduces three mature and typical textbook evaluation methods andtheir application cases abroad and then analyses and compares their features,in order to enhance the construction and perfection of the theoretical systemof textbook evaluation methods through studies in theory and practice levels.The reasons for choosing checklist method, experimental method and structureanalysis method are set forth in the part of introduction. Relevant researchconditions home and abroad are introduced. It also analyses the remainingproblems of textbook evaluation methods and defines the important concepts suchas textbook, textbook evaluation and textbook evaluation methods.In the first part, it introduces the checklist method and discusses itsdefinition, emergence and development, category and application steps. With thereal case, in which students’ English textbook for the ninth grade were evaluatedby ministry of education in Turkey through checklist method. Its process andresult analysis are illustrated to show the application of checklist method.In the second part, it describes the experimental evaluation method of textbooks in the aspects of concept, historical development and applicationsteps. Then it introduces briefly the experimental evaluation of two versionsof American history textbooks by American scholars. Its relevant experimentalbackground, the selection of experimental sample, testing method and analysisof results, show us a complete evaluation process.In the third part, textbook structure analysis method is also introducedin two levels-theory and practice. Firstly, it defines the concept of textbookstructure; on this basis, it describes the definition and emergence of textbookstructure analysis method, then expounds its theoretical basis and introducesits application steps. Two cases presented here are evaluation for the same worldhistory textbook the World of the 1986 vision for the sixth grade students inUSA and the objects of evaluation are the whole book and one text in it.In the previous parts, every method is analyzed separately in the aspectsof their advantages and disadvantages. On this basis, in the fifth part,comprehensive comparison is done for the three methods in the following aspects:evaluation subjects, evaluation objects and the degrees of difficulty. Thenrelative enlightenments for textbook evaluation methods are pointed out. Itsuggests that textbook evaluation needs exploration of theories, participationof various personnel and comprehensive application of many methods. The methodsshould be chosen with particular emphasis according to the different subjectsand tasks.