School Manuals Research Articles

Green school audit of twenty two schools in Pune city

Background: The Green school audit is a tool designed to help school communities to audit their use of natural resources. It provides schools with the methodology to become environmental managers by assessing themselves. Green school audit was part of green games initiatives of commonwealth youth games Pune 2008 with objective to carry out environmental audit of schools involving school children. Methods: The programme was carried out from March 2008 to October 2008 as a part of Green Games initiative of Commonwealth Youth Games. Twenty two schools voluntarily participated in this programme. Four medical students per school and one teacher from the Department of Community Medicine were posted per school to train one school teacher and twenty five school children about the audit. Each school was provided with a Green School manual; a do it yourself (DIY) guide that helped students to assess the five key elements that comprises their school’s environment namely air, water, land, energy and waste. Results: 15 schools were in green zone for air audit, 9 schools were in green zone for water audit, 11 schools were in green zone for land audit, 13 schools were in green zone for waste audit and 10 schools were in green zone for energy audit. Conclusions: This assessment helped each participating school to identify where it currently stood and where it should be with regard to the environmental standards prescribed in the manual. This is a learning programme for students helping them to develop environmentally conscious attitudes and ultimately a responsible behavior.

La nueva brecha digital. El futuro de las nuevas tecnologías en Primaria desde la formación del profesorado

The introduction of the new technologies in the classroom has created a great debate on his suitability and the necessary changes. This discussion has not had continuity in valuing the impact and use that of these technologies is done in Primary. The methodological inertia and of utilization of the school manual it provokes an insufficient application of the technology without a change in the method and the didactics based on the new resources and models of learning. After a brief analysis of the possible reasons of this new digital opened gap we try to answer to the principal question: why are not new technologies applied in the classroom as central part of the didactic process?

Manuais escolares: dispositivos pedagógico-ideológicos em áreas rurais

O artigo expõe resultados de pesquisa científica sobre o rural como objeto pedagógico: atualidade, representações e desafios, para aprofundar as concepções de ruralidade e alteridade em Por­tugal durante o Estado Novo, traduzidas, em especial, nos manuais escolares adotados entre 1940 – 1970. Em sua trajetória teórica e metodológica, desenvolve análise textual discursiva, com fun­damento em Moraes e Galiazzi (2007), reconstruída no contexto da investigação. Conclui pela importância do papel curricular do livro como veiculador e sedimentador de uma ideologia, capaz de ensejar a compreensão de uma época histórica, com suas políticas e seus modelos educacionais

La enseñanza de la historia y el uso de libros de texto ante los retos del siglo XXI. Entrevista a Rafael Valls Montés

The interview with Rafael Valls Montes addresses the importance of the textbook in teaching history. It is the most-used didactic resource in both Primary and Secondary Education in Spain. Dr. Valls is the specialist who has most studied the use of textbooks by teachers as well as their contents and activities. With an eye constantly on historiographical and psycho-pedagogical advances (Spain, Europe and America) and political context, the overall evolution can be considered positive. Since the 1970s, the creation of textbooks has been influenced by the idea of «total history», of the Annales School, with the inclusion of political, social, economic and cultural contents. However, school textbooks are still marked by numerous stereotypes, both factual and positivist, that detract from their usefulness. In addition, they tend to contribute to a lack of innovation in the teaching methodologies employed (reduced to lectures), resulting in students’ becoming passive receivers, obliged to memorize conceptual questions. The other great drawback of the school manual is that it essentially functions as a creator of identities: Spanish, European and, to a lesser extent, regional. This derives from a legacy of nineteenth-century nationalisms, which do not fit the multicultural reality of society as reflected in today’s classrooms. However, the manual is ultimately the result of the spirit of a succession of educational laws and, although its format may change it is bound to remain an essential resource for teaching and learning history. Moreover, it should serve as a stimulus for civic and innovative education

LETRAMENTO(S)/ALFABETIZAÇÃO EM CONTEXTOS MULTILÍNGUES DE ANGOLA E GUINÉ-BISSAU

RESUMO: A Pesquisa em Rede sobre relações raciais, diversidade socio-cultural e interculturalidade em países de língua portuguesa analisa, pelo viés da Análise Crítica do Discurso, segundo Van Dijk, obras literárias, segundo Paulino e Cosson, manuais escolares, segundo Dionísio e Costa Val, e documentos oficiais relacionados a políticas linguísticas e culturais, segundo Calvet. Dessa forma, enfatiza diálogos sul/sul, segundo Santos e Meneses, e Munanga e Gomes, e cooperação horizontal entre países de língua portuguesa, partindo de orientações das Leis brasileiras 10.639/2003 e 11.645/2008, que instituem o estudo da História e Cultura dos africanos e indígenas nas escolas brasileiras. Este texto apresenta duas investigações de mestrado que focalizam tensões entre língua oficial e língua(s) materna(s), nos processos de Letramento(s), em Angola e Guiné-Bissau, desenvolvidas por pesquisadores desses dois países, na Faculdade de Educação da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, no Brasil, que apontam para possibilidades do ensino bilíngue.

El estudio de los manuales escolares. Historiografí­a y estado actual: autores, investigaciones e instituciones

Los manuales escolares han ocupado el centro de la actividad académica desde que la escuela existe como institución normalizada. Incluso en la actualidad, cuando emergen movimientos renovadores a favor de la incorporación de nuevos materiales, de la modernización de los métodos y de la diversificación de recursos, una parte significativa de la cultura escolar se sigue basando en el uso de manuales, y los docentes dependen en buena medida de ellos. Este trabajo realiza un recorrido sobre el estudio reciente de los manuales escolares en relación con la historia de la educación; la mirada está puesta principalmente en España, pero se la ubica en el contexto europeo e iberoamericano. Mediante revisión bibliográfica, se actualiza la información sobre las investigaciones que se han llevado a cabo en este campo en los últimos años, las instituciones que los promueven y los autores y autoras más relevantes en este campo de saber.

The Move is On! From the Passive Multimedia Learner to the Engaged Co-creator

The educational integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has led to unfounded hopes of meeting many recurring educational challenges: from increasing learner motivation to lowering drop-out rates. ICTs are not an educational revolution per se; in some situations, their pedagogical usage lead to truly technologically-enhanced learning (TEL) situations, whereas in others, ICTs could relegate the learner to a passive spectator or low-interactivity user/consumer of multimedia content that limits the implementation of a socio-constructivist learning process based on a collaborative knowledge construction process. In this article, we analyze the limits of techno-centric approaches in the integration process of ICTs to teaching and learning, and argue for active learning and reflexive approaches to TEL. The Passive-Participatory (P-P) model we are suggesting can be termed as being socio-constructivist, participatory and inclusive as it allows teachers to integrate ICTs into their own specific educational context. Our model introduces five learning engagement levels in the pedagogical usage of technology: (Level 1) passive ICT usage, (Level 2) interactive ICT usage, (Level 3) content creation, (Level 4) content co-creation and, ultimately, (Level 5) participatory knowledge co-creation, which is oriented toward problem understanding within learning/knowledge-building communities. Building on Coates' definition of learning engagement as being the extent to which learners are actively involved in educational activities, the PP model of TEL activities stresses learning engagement could be limited to passive listening (e.g. video), low-interactivity usages (e.g. interactive school manuals), or could be supported through the usage of technologies for engagement in creative work.

An Elementary School Computer Programming Class incorporating Stepwise Tasks and Joint Teaching with Junior High School Manual Training Course Teacher

An Elementary School Computer Programming Class incorporating Stepwise Tasks and Joint Teaching with Junior High School Manual Training Course Teacher

Child Centred Approach to Climate Change and Health Adaptation through Schools in Bangladesh: A Cluster Randomised Intervention Trial.

BackgroundBangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. People are getting educated at different levels on how to deal with potential impacts. One such educational mode was the preparation of a school manual, for high school students on climate change and health protection endorsed by the National Curriculum and Textbook Board, which is based on a 2008 World Health Organization manual. The objective of this study was to test the effectiveness of the manual in increasing the knowledge level of the school children about climate change and health adaptation.MethodsThis cluster randomized intervention trial involved 60 schools throughout Bangladesh, with 3293 secondary school students participating. School upazilas (sub-districts) were randomised into intervention and control groups, and two schools from each upazila were randomly selected. All year seven students from both groups of schools sat for a pre-test of 30 short questions of binary response. A total of 1515 students from 30 intervention schools received the intervention through classroom training based on the school manual and 1778 students of the 30 control schools did not get the manual but a leaflet on climate change and health issues. Six months later, a post-intervention test of the same questionnaire used in the pre-test was performed at both intervention and control schools. The pre and post test scores were analysed along with the demographic data by using random effects model.ResultsNone of the various school level and student level variables were significantly different between the control and intervention group. However, the intervention group had a 17.42% (95% CI: 14.45 to 20.38, P = <0.001) higher score in the post-test after adjusting for pre-test score and other covariates in a multi-level linear regression model.ConclusionsThese results suggest that school-based intervention for climate change and health adaptation is effective for increasing the knowledge level of school children on this topic.

Los Manuales escolares para la enseñanza de la Geografía en el Estado Soberano de Santander: 1868-1879

El artículo presenta por lo menos tres objetivos. El primero de ellos, evidenciar los aspectos legislativos del Decreto Orgánico de Instrucción Pública Primaria –en adelante DOIPP– de 1870 en relación con el tema de los manuales escolares, el saber escolar de la geografía y la forma en que debía ser evaluada. En segunda instancia, se pretende señalar y describir el contenido y la difusión de algunos de los manuales escolares de geografía que hicieron presencia en el Estado Soberano de Santander en las últimas tres décadas del siglo XIX. Finalmente, se señala las formas en que se resistieron algunos miembros del magisterio santandereano ante la iniciativa de consolidar el texto impreso como principal referente de difusión de los saberes escolares. Con base en lo anterior, el artículo cuenta con cuatro apartados que versan sobre cada uno de los ítems antes señalados. Así entonces, se pudo constatar que el DOIPP reguló el tema de los manuales escolares, hasta el punto de identificar responsables directos para su consecución y procesos de vigilancia. Asimismo, la geografía en cuanto saber escolar, se vio normatizado en los planes de estudio. De la misma manera, se evidenció que el manual escolar de geografía no contó con el mismo número de material impreso con respecto a asignaturas como las de aritmética o lectura. Igualmente, se encontró que la geografía fue enseñada tanto en su versión universal, de Colombia y regional. Finalmente, aunque el Estado inculcó la importancia del impreso, emergieron voces que se mostraron defendiendo los métodos de enseñanza orales, con lo cual, fue posible identificar que la consolidación de lo impreso como motor difusor de la cultura, no fue una tarea sencilla y lineal.

Formal Rates of Herbart - Impact, Value and their Actuality

Herbart pedagogy represents a whole system of thesis and practices on pedagogy, didactics, methodologies and governance of the school. He tried to introduce a learning organization that have universal value. Herbartianism came in Albanian in 1916, in the Austro-Hungarian occupation area, through that opened by General Directorate of Education, based in Shkodra. Herbart ideas found application in several segments of primary and secondary education, practical interpretation editions Programs of classes I-V in elementary and topics developed methodically, published during the years 1919-1920 by Gasper Beltoja, Sotir Paparistos Exemplary lessons... in primary and secondary schools in of professor Aleksander Xhuvani and the Didactics manual for primary schools prepared by methodist Kel Vila. Our school embraced his didactics. The stages of the learning process, as later were called formal rates, were embraced by our teachers and became part of the classroom organization. The object of the study will be Gasper Beltoja publications as one of neoherbartians that along with programs for elementary gave examples of developing lessons in language, history, maths, natural sciences, etc., according to Herbart formal rates. Although these publications did not meet all the needs that had on that period, served as signals that a new era was starting for the school, made it more controllable, influenced on the discipline of teaching in chaotic conditions of Albanian education, especially showed teachers the key for each lesson. All this already seen under the light of the time. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v4n1p317

Cultural and lingual-cultural aspect of illustrated materials in primary school course books and manuals for Russian language

This paper is on the research of culturally relevant illustrated material from primary school course books and manuals for Russian language. Visual evidence has immense value in comprehension and adoption of lingual-cultural facts, because differences in visual expressions of different peoples are far smaller than differences in verbal means. In contemporary methodology, lingual-culture and teaching culture are discussed as an integral and compulsory part of the teaching process in accordance with the new cultural paradigm, formed in the second part of the 90s entitled 'culture by the means of the language, language by the means of culture'. Based on the results of the analysis of illustrated material (IM) from the actual course book corpus (consisted of two actual primary school course books series for Russian the 'Orbit' (Russian as compulsory optional foreign language - between the 5th and 8th grade)), and 'Rodnicog' (Russian as the first foreign language - from the 1st to the 8th grade). We intended to point at one of the functions of a foreign language course book - function of foreign language transmission. In this respect, we have identified, estimated and evaluated culturally relevant IM from the different aspects, and we tried to find the most significant theoretical postulates for each of them upon which research has been done on the defined material. We have seen all types of illustrations found in general theory of course books, IM is functional, determined by definite methodological task, adjusted to the age of a child and his/her experience, receptive abilities and preferences, adjusted to the text or exercises. Illustrations aimed at semantics are clear, without any insufficient details, photographs are dominant, most often there are reviews of architecture, ambient, nature and realia. Approach of IM author is contemporary, real presentations of cultural values of Russia are authentic. Course books have rich and versatile IM, different topics, for the first time, there are religious topics, and this is significant for Serbian-Russian spiritual and Orthodox relations (points at the culture dialogue). The initial assumption has been confirmed, that with the age and widening communicative competence, there is a larger number of illustrations carrying cultural information.

Livros didáticos e Estado Novo: um projeto ideológico

This article aims at reflecting about the ethnical and cultural diversity's place regarding the educational policies focused on the nationalization of education and its interference in the coursebooks contents during the Estado Novo dictatorial regime. This period is marked by meaningful interventions in education, with the promotion of actions that aim at increasing the State's dominance over this area. It's in this scope that the National Comission of Coursebooks is created, which has the objective of checking the ideological and methodological content of the school manuals. We are going to demonstrate how the educational area was important to legitimize the then president Geultio Vargas' power. However, the overall outlook undergoing during Vargas era was unfavourable to the diverse forms of ethnical and cultural expressions existing in Brazil, regarding the reflection of an education that ranked the school contents and kept an ideological point of view marked by the consolidation of the national unity idea.

Effects of Procurement Procedures on Adoption of Procurement Manual for Schools and Colleges (2009) in Kenyan Secondary Schools: A Case Study of Gatanga Sub-County, Murang’a County, Kenya

There has been quest for organized and standardized procurement procedures in our Kenyan schools. PPOA to this effect introduced procurement manual for schools and colleges (2009) as a customized version of procurement act (2005) specifically for schools and colleges in Kenya. However there was a problem on the adoption of this manual to secondary schools in Kenya. The researcher felt interested in finding out the degree of adoption of this manual in Kenyan schools, sampling Gatanga sub county, Murang’a County. The researcher sampled Gatanga Sub County among many others since it has a track record of ranking among the best in Constituency Development funds management. In this study, the researcher was also interested in finding out the effects of competence of various procurement committee members, procurement methods used and political interference on adopting procurement manual for schools and colleges (2009). Gatanga subcounty has a total of 34 secondary schools from which the researcher carried out his study in 11 schools sampled according to their category .There are three categories of schools in Gatanga .These are Boarding schools offering full boarding facilities for boys and girls or separate, the next is day schools which are the majority and the last is mixed day and boarding schools which give students choice of either boarding or being day scholars. The researcher handled 76 participants in the procurement process. They include the school bursars, Deputy Principals who chairs procurement committee meetings, various heads of departments, and a user department member preferably catering department. The researcher used stratified sampling technique for his data collection. He also used questionnaires and interviews tools of data collection. Data was collected by dropping the questionnaires in targeted schools and arrangements made on how they will be collected later for data collection, processing and analyzing.

Edible Histories. Cultural Politics. Towards a Canadian Food History

Table of Contents Preface Introduction I Cultural Exchanges and Cuisines in the Contact Zone 1. 'Fit for the table of the most fastidious epicure': Culinary Colonialism in the Upper Canadian Contact Zone 2. 'The snipe were good and the wine not bad': Enabling Public Life for Privileged Men 3. The Role of Food in Canadian Expressions of Christianity II Regional Food Identities and Traditions 4. Pine-clad hills and spindrift swirl: The Character, Persistence, and Significance of Rural Newfoundland Foodways 5. Stocking the Root Cellar: Foodscapes in the Peace River Region 6. Rational Meals for the Traditional Family: Nutrition in Quebec School Manuals, 1900-1960 III Foodways and Memories in Ethnic and Racial Communities 7. 'We Didn't Have A Lot of Money, But We Had Food': Ukrainians and Their Depression-Era Food Memories 8. Feeding the Dead: The Ukrainian Food Colossi of the Canadian Prairies 9. Toronto's Multicultured Tongues: Stories of South Asian Cuisines IV Gendering Food in Cookbooks and Family Spaces 10. More than 'just' Recipes: Mennonite Cookbooks in Mid-twentieth Century North America 11. Gefilte Fish and Roast Duck with Orange Slices: A Treasure for my Daughter and the Creation of a Jewish Cultural Orthodoxy in Postwar Montreal 12. 'Tutti a Tavola!' Feeding the Family in Two Generations of Italian Immigrant Households in Montreal V Single Food Commodities, Markets, and Cultural Debates 13. John Bull and Sons: The Empire Marketing Board and the Creation of a British Imperial Food System 14. Spreading Controversy: The Story of Margarine in Quebec VI Protests, Mindful Eating, and the Politics of Food 15. The Politics of Milk: Canadian Housewives Organize in the 1930s 16. 'Less Inefficiency, More Milk': The Politics of Food and the Culture of the English-Canadian University, 1900-1950 17. The Granola High: Eating Differently in the 1960s and 1970s 18. 'Meat Stinks/Eat Beef Dyke!': Coming out as a Vegetarian in the Prairies VII National Identities and Cultural Spectacles 19. Nationalism on the Menu: Three Banquets on the 1939 Royal Tour 20. Food Acts and Cultural Politics: Women and the Gendered Dialectics of Culinary Pluralism at the International Institute of Toronto, 1950s-1960s VIII Marketing and Imposing Nutritional Standards 21. Vim, Vigour and Vitality: 'Power' Foods for Kids in Canadian Popular Magazines, 1914-1954 22. Making and Breaking Canada's Food Rules: Science, the State, and the Government of Nutrition, 1942-1949 23. 'A National Priority': Nutrition Canada's Survey and the Disciplining of Aboriginal Bodies, 1964-75

Answerable Style: The Idea of the Literary in Medieval England ed. by Frank Grady and Andrew Galloway (review)

Reviewed by: Answerable Style: The Idea of the Literary in Medieval England ed. by Frank Grady and Andrew Galloway Kathleen Smith Frank Grady and Andrew Galloway, eds. Answerable Style: The Idea of the Literary in Medieval England. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013. Pp. vii + 341. $74.95 cloth, $14.95 CD. This volume in honor of Anne Middleton collects essays on a variety of approaches to medieval literary style, with an emphasis on the works of Chaucer and Langland. Written in the spirit of the festschrift, a number of the essays critically engage with both Middleton’s work and the practice of new formalism in medieval literary studies, offering a welcome contribution to the discipline. As the editors Frank Grady and Andrew [End Page 314] Galloway caution: medievalists began to turn their attention to the formal elements of style long before the movement of new formalism supposedly began. The volume nevertheless assembles a collection of essays with the goal of pursuing the literary as such. The book is divided into two sections, with the first group of essays focusing on vernacular literary style as it employs and often departs from Latin literary style. The second half focuses more exclusively on English vernacular expressions of style. The volume has been published by Ohio State University Press as part of the series Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture, which includes theoretically inflected works on animal studies, gender, law, translation studies, and politics. The essays largely exercise, to borrow Levinson’s phrase, a kind of activist formalism, carefully attuned to historical context but never dominated by it in the practice of literary analysis. Rita Copeland’s excellent discussion of the shift in the reception of Horace’s Ars poetica from the Middle Ages to the early modern period inaugurates the collection. The Ars poetica, she argues, moved from the status of grammar school manual to universalizing classic of critical theory because of a shift in its use and therefore its perceived status. Once other style manuals, such as Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova, became more frequently employed in the classroom, Horace’s poem was dislodged from the practical and repetitive doldrums of schoolwork. For this reason, the Ars poetica could be “rediscovered” as a humanist classic in the sixteenth century since it was no longer connected to the lower status of grammar school composition manual. Copeland’s essay, which builds on her earlier work on rhetoric and pedagogy, offers valuable insight into discussions of style by examining the reception of theories of style. Ralph Hanna employs a similar methodology for thinking about genre in “Speculum Vitae and the Form of Piers Plowman” and also offers a compelling response to Nicholas Watson’s influential theory of vernacular theology. While Watson had emphasized the growth of a culture of censorship at the hands of Archbishop Thomas Arundel after 1409 as the major factor in shaping English vernacular writings about theology, Hanna suggests that perhaps simply a change in tastes might be the factor that best explains why catechetical works such as the Speculum vitae fell out of favor with writers. These texts had exhausted the possibilities for writing about virtues and vices within the genre of catechetical writing and Hanna argues that writers like Langland sought new [End Page 315] forms for thinking about practical or applied religious issues. Hanna’s approach offers readers a theory that should spark further debate on the genres of religious writing that emerged in England in the later Middle Ages. Katherine Zieman’s essay, “Escaping the Whirling Wicker: Ricardian Poetics and Narrative Voice in The Canterbury Tales,” in addition to advancing excellent analyses for those who work in the field, also gives an overview of scholarly debate on character and narrative voice in Chaucer that would be especially useful to graduate students. She responds to Middleton’s idea of “public poetry” in Ricardian literature, focusing on the rhetorical strategies Chaucer employs to create an impression of a fully realized character. The Man of Law’s Tale offers moments of narrative interruption that call attention to the narrator, and in doing so, create a sense of character. These moments of interruption, however, should also...

Food recommendations in domestic education, Belgium 1890–1940

This paper addresses the question of dissemination of nutritional knowledge in textbooks of household schools between 1890 and 1940. It starts by considering the nature of food recommendations in manuals that are used in Belgian household schools, and then deals with the sources that are referred to by those who give food advice, comparing the latter to the state of the art of nutritional knowledge. If, prior to 1925, school manuals referred to working-class households, paid attention to abundant and economical food, recommended meat, hardly cared about breakfast and connected food to health in a general way, the manuals of the late 1920s and 1930s discussed the average consumer, advised limited meat consumption, warned against unbalanced diets that could lead to specific diseases and recommended required amounts of calories and vitamins. Textbook authors rarely referred to their sources – and if they did, international names were hardly mentioned – which raises the question of the value of the information in these textbooks. Yet from the late 1920s onwards, more direct references were made to science and researchers, which may be linked to the strengthening of scientific authority within society.

Digital media embedded in Swedish art education – A case study

In this case study a secondary school and its art education is studied. Pupils and the art teacher are interviewed and observations are made in school and out of school. The study is based on socio-cultural theory, media ecology and semiotics. In this school manual and digital media each share about 50 percent of the time available for art. It is shown that it is the teaching method – the change from a dialogic to a multivoiced method – that enables the embedded use of digital media. Arguments for digital media in art are that they are time-saving, promote aesthetic aspects and will put an end to the process of traditional education where the teacher is reduced to being a conveyor of information. The computer lab is no option for an embedded art education. On monitors and in exhibitions pupils are surrounded by other pupils works, which promotes a desire among them to improve their creativity, and a local art culture is developed in a cumulative process.

A mão, o cérebro, o coração. Prescrições para a leitura em manuais escolares para o Curso Normal (1940 1960/ Brasil-Portugal)

School manuals to be used by teachers and students were established in Portugal and Brazil in the late 19 th century and were consolidated throughout the 20 th century as instruments/ objects of school culture. This text examines a school manual for use at the Normal Schools produced in Brazil in 1955 – Licoes de Pedagogia, 1o ano, by Aquiles Archero Junior –, which, in the requirements for reading, interacted with a manual produced in Portugal in 1949 and used in Brazil – A arte da leitura, by Mario Goncalves Viana. This research focuses on the requirements for the teaching of reading at school and seeks to highlight how authors used knowledge that contributed to make reading a school knowledge.

Frühe Lese- und Schreiblernbücher des 16. Jahrhunderts. Zu Valentin Ickelsamers Die rechte weis, aufs kürtzist lesen zu lernen (1527) und Teütsche Grammatica (1532?)

The essay investigates the semantics and pragmatics of two reading and writing manuals of the protestant schoolmaster and grammarian Valentin Ickelsamer (Die rechte weis (1527) and Teütsche Grammatica (1532?), asking for their pedagogical and medial status between school teaching and out-of-school learning. Like other works of early modern instructive literature they emphasized “self-learning” processes, which made them a polyfunctional expedient for private school teaching as well as for informal home schooling or self-education. Methodically, they focused on more effective learning processes using phonetic instead of spelling approaches, which aimed to the insemination of grammatical, etymological and orthographical knowledge as well as to a critical language awareness. Ickelsamer pursued this goal in the framework of the new opportunities of the printing press to make religious and secular knowledge accessible for all laymen by means of a reading and writing manual. Therefore, this type of early modern school manual transgresses the institutional functions attributed to schoolbooks today. In Ickelsamer’s works, literacy appears not only as a mere ‘technique of culture’, but as a theologically and ethically established form of individual formation by linguistic knowledge.