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(This is a text summary of the He Said She Said podcast from September 1, 2005. This is a bi-weekly podcast that deals with a wide range of topic on Education and Educational Technology. The show’s host is Rob Reynolds and he is joined by Susan Smith Nash. The He Said She Said podcast is available every Tuesday and Thursday on Xplana Radio.)

Briefly…

[Susan] Okay, Rob thinks I’m crazy. But, think about it – for online courses, textbook publishers have created a situation that has helped academic departments that are cash-strapped, and short on time and instructors.

[Rob] I absolutely think she’s a little crazy. And, while I don’t think her description of reality is inaccurate for some schools, I do believe she is trying to make lemonade our of lemons and that the real infection will continue to fester until individual teachers decide to do something different.

Here is what Susan and Rob have to say.

She Said:

Here are a few factors I discuss in the podcast:

• Textbooks often have high-quality content which has been developed and reviewed by small armies of subject matter experts.
• Textbooks are consistent in quality because they must meet the needs of their clients, who must achieve clearly stated outcomes, often defined by state boards of education.
• Universities, large and small, use the same textbooks which allow students to “speak the same language” and to have the same kinds of education for the same types of courses / degrees. This is invaluable when students are faced with transferring from one university to another.
• Using textbook-developed course materials helps reduce course development time, and makes it unnecessary to hire large numbers of instructional designers and technologists.
• Textbook-designed companion Web sites and learning activities / learning objects can help save time and money.

There are a few downsides – textbooks can lead to cookie-cutter courses, and instructors can be left out of the loop.

I have to say that a part of me is utopia (or renegade, in western cowboy parlance), and I like individuality and personal attention. I also have visions of courses that are flexible enough to bring the content into one’s context…but I discuss that on the next He Said She Said podcast.

He Said

Okay, Susan and I agree on a few things:

1. There are a lot of textbooks around and they do have content in them;
2. Textbook content can be used as an anchor or ancillary instruction source for a course — if you are talking about lowest-common-denominator courses;

But Susan’s comments remind me of a publisher friend of mine who likes to say that there is indeed a national curriculum — and it’s the textbook! His argument is that the textbook has been refined by market feedback (teachers), is written by experts (teachers), and undergoes revision after revision based on national standards and changing philosophies in education. In his view, the textbook is the most consistent and constant thing in the classroom. So the textbook, which represents the national curriculum and which represents the current status of a particular discipline, is really a bargain at the price for which it is sold.

And that’s precisely why I can’t agree with Susan’s line of reasoning. A textbook is a sanitized collection of material that represents the broadest possible consensus of the current market. It is designed to sell the greatest number of volumes possible. That is not what I want or need to be the anchor of my classroom or curriculum.

• I believe all good teaching and learning is contextualized within the boundaries of the combined giftedness of the teachers, the students, the family, and the local community. Good teaching and learning begins with an assessment of that giftedness and adds learning material and communication channels that necessarily match the learning community’s context. In other words, it is always unique and always customized.
• I believe that teachers are paid to be in charge of this process, not have it dictated to them by a textbook.

Are administrators and bureaucrats at fault for making instruction about something other that passing along communal wisdom and helping learners develop intellectually and emotionally? Of course they are.

Are parents at fault for not getting involved more actively and helping teachers define the communal context? Absolutely.

But, as I have said before, the real accountability is with the teacher. He or she is ultimately the gatekeeper for the context of any class, regardless of the official materials handed to him or her.

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