October 13 post

The article about how to choose the right text book was a bit intimidating. I found it interesting that there was a section about a fit between the textbook and the student, and then a fit between a textbook and the teacher, and both sections had the same topic concepts to think about. This paralleled nicely, but it got me wondering how in the world one textbook can cover all of these “fits.” Obviously, this simply will not be possible, but this fact is a bit discouraging. It also scared me when it said that “a teacher needs to read the whole book—from start to finish, including any appendices” (4). I in no way want to be lazy, but textbooks can be so big and you would need to read a few of them before making your decision, and I wonder if this is realistic. I know a few different people who did not get a teaching job until a few weeks before school started. Personally, I think it is possible to thoroughly overview a textbook, and catch important features of the book, by reading reviews, seeking help from other teachers, or following the steps outlined under the section “initial reading of a textbook.”

I thought the distinction between syllabus and curriculum was a good one in “Curriculum design and materials development,” but for me made everything more confusing then when I began. I feel like I have always known the difference, and this article confirmed that my thoughts are correct, but it certainly made me re-read and second guess myself a few times. However, the article talked a lot about how to go about organizing and approaching both a curriculum and a syllabus, and I appreciated that. I have created a syllabus in a few of my methods courses here at ISU, but we rarely think about how it differs from a curriculum. As for the section about customers and stakeholders, this reminded me of Paulo Freire’s idea about the banking concept of education. Obviously, the students are the “customers” of the information given by the teacher and the textbook, but this term was problematic for me because we do not want our students simply “buying” into everything we say. As teachers, we should want out students to discover things on their own, analyze, and essentially be given the tools to find for themselves why something is correct or makes sense before buying into not only the issue, but buying into an idea that they can’t or don’t understand something.

This gets me into my opinions about learner-centered curriculums. As I stated above, I personally feel as though questioning and actively thinking about issues is much more effective than simply assuming a teacher or a textbook is always right. Now, I know that as a future teacher I will need to use a textbook, but I will certainly try and use the concepts, but not necessarily the examples or the language used in the book if I do not think it fits my students need to explore and understand things in their own terms. The article talked about contextualization and the importance of giving examples that students can relate to, and I think this is something very important that a text book likely would not produce. You know your students so you, as the teacher, should create these personalized examples and activities.