PDF (Whole Thesis) - USQ ePrints - University of Southern ...

textbooks are...a very important vehicle for shaping their [students’] understanding of the
world, not least because they perceive that textbooks represent the ‘official’ point of view of
grown-ups” (2006, p. ix). Even if students themselves do not use specific textbooks regularly,
often teachers draw teaching material from them resulting in the widespread use and
endorsement of the content contained within textbooks (see, for example, Gray’s note to
teachers in the preface of Essentials of history). Issitt identifies some of the negative
connotations associated with the term ‘textbook’, but also states that even with the negativity
they attract, textbooks “as a teaching aid and as part of the learning experience, they are
practically ubiquitous…on the one hand textbooks are derided, but…the reality of their
universal use cannot be denied” (2004, p. 683). Issitt further explains that textbooks can be
seen as the internal underpinnings of a particular subject area and that the textbooks “function
to create, trace and maintain the boundaries of a discipline by inclusion or exclusion of
subjects and by expressing a disciplinary discourse that lays claims to a particular terrain of
ideas” (p. 688). Luke, de Castell and Luke emphasise the importance of textbooks as a
pedagogical tool, writing:
The significant role of textbooks in education...is a function of their ability to ‘make
meanings more explicit’ in a manner which places those meanings ‘above
criticism’...Since schooling aims to transmit...‘culturally significant
knowledge’...textbooks are an ideal format. (1989, p. 246)
The importance of textbooks cannot be ignored, in terms of shaping and informing the
official knowledge of the school curriculum (see Apple, 1988 for an early discussion
regarding economics and textbooks), with Gilbert stating: “...textbooks are an
important...factor influencing the questions, issues and topics discussed in classrooms. In
influencing the agendas of classroom discussion they are important discursive frameworks”
(1989, p. 70). Furthermore, Davis writes:
Textbooks derive their power not from their ubiquitous presence in classrooms.
If they did although they do not, chalkboards and pencils and paper would
share textbooks’ potency. Textbooks are powerful not because of the nature of the
texts that they include. Simply, textbooks are powerful because they contain the
information that society expects students to know...As Michael Apple has so aptly
noted, the knowledge in almost all textbooks, however written, compiled and
published, properly may be classified as “official knowledge”. (2006, p. xiii)
28