Text book as instructional resources

 Text books

Textbooks  are the central teaching tool for Social Science learning.

Bacon defined the textbook as "a book designed for classroom use, carefully prepared by experts in the field and equipped with the usual teaching devices".

Textbooks are the best companion for students and just a supplementary material for teachers.

Purpose of Text Books

Major purposes of text books are:-

1. To help the teachers

It provides useful guidelines for day to day teaching. It provides suggestions for assignments and serve as a reference book for the teachers

2. To help the students.

For pupils, textbooks are the most accessible guide, reference books and all time companion.

3. To give minimum essential knowledge at one place.

A text book that covers the entire syllabus and give minimum essential knowledge at one place.

4. To help in self teaching.

It gives an overall coverage of content, provides concerned activities, information about further studies, assignments, enrichment tasks, self assessments etc. So it act as a resource of self teaching.

5. To provide logical and comprehensive material.

A good textbook provides materials in a logical, systematic and comprehensive form.

6. To ensure uniformity and a good standard.

The text-book provides a highway for carry

ing better practice to all schools. Some sort of uniformity and good standard is ensured.

7. To provide a base from which both the teacher and the pupils may start and continue to work.

 It provides a common ground for both the students and teachers to explore together.

8. To provide both confirmation and sustenance.

Text books can confirm knowledge obtained elsewhere.

9. To ensure intellectual rapprochement of learners.

It can coordinate the activities and bring about the intellectual rapprochement of pupils.

Criteria for a Social science Text Books

Authenticity.

Ensure scholarly accuracy as well as suitability in terms of interest, appeal and curricular considerations.

Treatment of Content.

Ensure adequate treatment of important concepts in sufficient depth. Avoid highly descriptive factual accounts or storybook approaches to significant content.

Format and General Appearance.

Ensure an interesting and appealing book of proper size with good-quality binding and suitable type size.

Organization.

Ensure the book's harmony with the existing curricular pattern and see that it meets the needs of instructional programmes within which it will be used.

Visual Materials.

Ensure accurate illustrations of sufficient number and size.

Instructional Aids

It should be helpful for the preparation of support materials.

Literary Quality

Ensure that the book is well written and most approachable to students.

• It should help in achieving the purposes of Social Science learning.

• It should be child centred. It should contain fluent narration

• It should have a clear self-explanatory arrangement

• It should be simple, interesting and attractive enough to take the form of self-study reader.

• It should be free from indoctrination It should provide proper and adequate exercises and suggestions for activities.

• It must be up-to-date

• It should help in developing international understanding.

•  It should contain references for further study

• It should also enter to the needs of backward pupils

• It should promote group effort

• It should contain a subject index at the end. 

Merits.

• Textbooks can be great help in the planning of courses, units and lessons.

• They provide an organization or structure for the course.

• They provide a selection of content that acts as the basis of a course.

• They provide a certain number of activities and suggestions for training

• They provide information about other readings, sources of information, audiovisual and other aids, and other teaching materials and tools.

• Textbooks can be used as a basic reading and as a launching pad for further activities such as discussions and research activities.

Disadvantages

• They are usually dull.

• They tend to discourage real reading and studying

• They are liable to be superficial, because authors try to include something about everything and so say too little about too much.

• They do not provide for differences in pupil ability or realisation

Qualities of a social science text book

It should help in achieving the purpose of learning social science:

It should meet thebnational goals like secular and national integration. It should enable children to appreciate India's rich cultural heritage.

 

It should be child-centered:

A good text-book on social science should be suitable to the age, ability and interest of pupils. It should be primarily addressed to pupils a a particular age group belonging to a specific developmental status and of a particular society.

It should contain fluent narration:

A detailed description of each content should be in Textbook. The language is simple and readable to the learner.

It should have a clear and self explanatory arrangement:

It should have a detailed table of contents. The material should be arranged under headings and subheadings to be easily comprehended by the pupils.

It should open up various avenues of thought and study:

 It should create interest among learner and also give suggestions for further reading. It should give reference to related books and websites. So the text books open the gate way of inquiry and discovery learning.

The language of the text book should be suitable for the "reading age" of the pupils:

The text-book for the younger children especially should be written in simple sentences so as to establish effective communication with them. The language used should also be accurate and appropriate so that it helps in enriching children's language.

It should be well-illustrated:

The abstract concepts presented in the text-book should be illustrated through visual aids, such as photographs, maps, time-lines, and pictures.

picture-diagrams, etc.

The book should be attractive, inviting, a pleasure to look at and read.

Illustrations should be well chosen and should be connected with the main theme.

 A good social science text-book helps the children to make maximum use of illustrations by giving captions, explanatory notes and exploratory questions along with the illustrations. Illustrations given in the text-book of social science must be very accurate and realistic.

It should be simple, interesting and attractive enough to take the form of a self study material:

It should be free from indoctrination:

It should present a comparative view of the ideas of different people expressed in a particular phase of life.

It should provide proper and adequate exercises and suggestions for activities at the end of each chapter:

•  The exercises should flow from the main text, supplement and complement it.