IARTEM e-journal

Resources and textbooks for computer science education in French primary schools

Isabelle Vandevelde — 2022-10-14

This article examines a corpus of texts that define the scope and objectives of computer science (CS) education at primary school level in France, including textbooks, curricula, and institutional documents. Faced with these new programs, and in the absence of any specific training on methods for teaching computer science, teachers have had to make do by relying on a disparate set of documents ranging from prescriptive and guidance texts, official directives and curricula, institutional documents, textbooks, and other books. This article provides an analysis of these documents from a computer science pedagogy perspective with the aim of exploring how they change and evolve through the grades of education. We begin with a transversal analysis to highlight changes in the content taught from one cycle to the next. Then, we focus on how a specific notion, the notion of loop, is introduced to students, in order to characterise how the same notion is formulated and evolves across the different textbooks. In this way, we show that loops are defined differently across textbooks, using vocabulary that is increasingly precise and connected to other areas of knowledge, without being always connected to the digital field.

Choosing from a range of e-resources when planning lessons

Jana Stara — 2022-09-07

In this article we report on a qualitative survey in a primary school based on observation in the classrooms and interviews with teachers. The aim was to find out what e-sources teachers were using during the mandated distance learning in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and immediately after students returned to school, and how and why they were using them. The results show that teachers are not very familiar with the range of complex e-textbooks and their additional digital support offered by publishing houses. They believe they can find fun and interactive exercises on the internet on their own and in practice they do so, often unsystematically. The teachers’ main criteria for selecting sources are attractiveness, fun and interactivity. The research shows that in the flood of different e-resources that teachers can use, it is more crucial that the textbook plays a coordinating role. Within it, it is important to offer teachers high quality and goal-oriented resources that they can adapt, combine, and compile according to their own discretion and the needs of their classroom. At the same time, there is a need to focus teacher training on developing competences to work with diverse and fragmented resources.

Developing a Corequisite Writing Textbook

Dawn Atkinson — 2022-12-14

Despite the growing body of scholarship focused on Open Educational Resources (OERs), studies tracking open textbook production are exceedingly rare. To gain insight into the complexities associated with open textbook development, this article’s authors used concurrent verbalization and pre- and post-concurrent verbalization interviews to document writing episodes while composing their first coursebook, an open-source text designed for corequisite course pairings of writing fundamentals and introduction to technical writing. Corequisite classes combine content-area instruction with explicit skill-building opportunities, and although commercial publishing houses do produce corequisite textbooks for traditional general education courses, the authors were impelled by the need to create a specialized coursebook for a STEM-focused writing corequisite. Qualitative content analysis of the data collected during ongoing coursebook development revealed how the novice textbook authors navigated complexities when sourcing material for the book, formatting content, and embedding hyperlinks into chapters. Open textbook development offers a variety of professional development opportunities, and the details provided herein could be instructive to others embarking on open coursebook projects and inspire further inquiry into ongoing open textbook production. This paper also exposes the dynamic interaction between textbook content as designed and operationalized, offering implications for the research field of materials development.

Criteria in English language textbook evaluation checklists

Mohamad Syafiq Ya Shak — 2022-12-14

The systematic review was carried out to examine evaluation criteria in textbook evaluation checklists used to evaluate ESL/EFL textbooks around the world and to identify gaps and additional criteria that could be included in future textbook evaluation checklists to meet the demand of current teaching and learning situations. Two databases - Scopus and the Web of Science - were explored to collect data. Primary searches between 2011 and 2021 revealed 92 studies dealing with the topic under investigation. After scrutinizing abstracts and removing duplicates, 36 studies were retained for further analysis. A thematic analysis was conducted to derive themes for the criteria enlisted in these studies. The themes of criteria that emerged were: (1) practical considerations; (2) layout and design; (3) language skills; (4) language activities and tasks; (5) topic/subject of the content; (6) appropriateness for students; (7) cultural considerations; (8) supplementary materials; and (9) fitness with the language program aims and objectives. It is recommended that future textbook evaluation checklists could focus on criteria that relate to an ESL/EFL textbook’s relatability to its users, especially in terms of its culture representation, its ability to enable self-study, and a wider integration of technology, especially in the era of online distance learning which is expected to stay even if the COVID-19 pandemic subsides later.

Teaching by the Book

Yasmin Sitabkhan — 2022-09-07

The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology for understanding materials usage in primary classrooms in Sub-Saharan Africa that centers teachers’ actions and voices. The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 focuses on improved primary education around the world. To meet this goal, many large, donor-funded interventions aim to improve education through provision of teacher’s guides and student textbooks. However, what many of these interventions lack is a systematic way to understand how and why teachers are making pedagogical decisions while using materials. There is a large body of work that seeks to understand how teachers make decisions as they teach, and the ways these decisions are influenced by their knowledge and beliefs. Drawing from this work, we describe a methodology and set of tools that uses observations and interviews to identify key decisions that teachers make in the classroom and why teachers made those decisions. We piloted and iteratively refined this methodology over the course of three studies and use examples from these studies to illustrate the methodology. By closely observing and listening to teachers, we gain insights that allow us to continually refine and improve materials to ultimately improve the quality of classroom instruction.

Editorial

The editorial committee — 2022-09-07

This is an editorial for Vol 14