What A Modern School Textbook Represents: Viewpoints From Pedagogical Studies

Abstract

The following article regards a modern school textbook, its nature and main properties, which is essential for the study of the development of the student’s linguistic world view in the learning process. Hereby we provide the definition of the textbook within the scientific views of the Institute for Strategy of Education Development of the Russian Academy of Education, in particular of the scientific school Didactics of General Education: M.N. Skatkin, I.Y. Lerner and N.M. Shahmaev’s Scientific School and the scientific school Primary School of the 21st Century: N.F. Vinogradova’s Scientific School. Moreover, we include I.L. Bim’s analysis of a textbook in a foreign language. In order to study textbook content from cognitive linguistic point of view we apply the metaphor of an accurate educational navigator that lays the teacher and student’s route to the world of knowledge. In the result of the study of theoretical background on the subject of the research, the textbook is defined as a fundamental teaching tool, enabling one to conceive effective solutions to learning problems, which concern the development of the student’s cognition and ethics. Thus, the textbook presents a piece of educational discourse, complete in its composition, structure, and content, aiming at engaging the student into the world. The presence of a complete linguistic world view in the textbook remains compulsory and essential, and the study of this linguistic world view is possible to conduct on the basis of the cognitive linguistic approach.