Textbook Projects Research Articles

Tracing the Influences of Praxis on the Development of an Open Corequisite Writing Textbook

Although retrospective project reports are common in the materials development literature, accounts of textbook writing sessions are rare; so too are accounts of open textbook production. Open textbooks are learning resources that are free to use and oftentimes adapt by virtue of their copyright permissions. The authors used concurrent verbalization and interviews to document writing episodes while preparing their first book, an open textbook devised for corequisite technical writing courses. Corequisite designs pair content courses with explicit skill-building modules as a means to support underprepared learners in higher education in the United States. Qualitative content analysis of the data revealed how teaching and other praxis influenced the open textbook’s composition: in the authors’ applications of technical writing principles, pedagogical reasoning skills, and nonteaching work. The findings may encourage open textbook writers to exploit their established composing practices and knowledge bases to proceed with textbook production. In addition, the article highlights the usefulness of concurrent verbalization to textbook research and identifies the various materials development opportunities open textbook projects provide. It also contributes to the underresearched area of textbook production by exposing the complexities of open textbook development and how two novice authors negotiated them during writing episodes.

Teaching Note—Adopting, Adapting, and Creating Open Textbooks: A Brief Guide for Faculty

ABSTRACT Across North America, the open education movement has blossomed in the past 10 years, with a majority of institutions of higher education employing open textbooks in at least one course. Unfortunately, social work lags behind other disciplines in the adoption, adaptation, and creation of open educational resources. This teaching note offers practical advice for faculty exploring open education based on the lessons learned from the author’s two open textbook projects for undergraduate and graduate social work research methods. As universities, states, and international bodies increase funding for open education projects, the field of social work should demonstrate its commitment to equity, inclusion, and justice by leading these efforts within our classrooms, discipline, and institutions.

Oliver Rathkolb, ed., How to (Re)Write European History: History and Text Book Projects in Retrospect

Oliver Rathkolb, ed., <i>How to (Re)Write European History: History and Text Book Projects in Retrospect</i>

Historians as rooted cosmopolitans: their potentials and limitations

AbstractIn the 1990s, the so‐called ‘history problem’ began to escalate in East Asia as the result of mutually reinforcing nationalist commemorations in Japan, South Korea and China. In response, historians from the three countries organized joint historical research and textbook projects. In this article, I examine the extent to which these joint projects succeeded in promoting the cosmopolitan logic of historiography that challenged nationalist commemorations. Specifically, I compare governmental and non‐governmental projects and illustrate structural and dispositional mechanisms that facilitated the cosmopolitan logic of historiography. However, at the same time, I show that the joint projects have had only a limited impact on official and public commemorations because of the absence of any formal institutional links between historians' activities, governments and the public. Thus, while historians have the potential to act as rooted cosmopolitans and to mobilize transnational epistemic networks in East Asia, they have been unable effectively to counteract nationalist commemorations.

Open Source Textbooks: A Paradigm Derived from Open Source Software

This work exposes a new paradigm for the creation and publication of textbooks: open source. The phrase open source is borrowed from the computer software industry, where the word source has a technical meaning explained in this paper; open source software is software which has been developed by many collaborators using the internet to produce a final product. The contributors receive no financial compensation, yet there have been many successful open source software projects (Linux, Open Office, Apache, etc.). Open source textbooks use a similar financial model; the authors and contributors receive no direct financial compensation for their work. Contributors are listed in the produced work as primary author(s), co-authors, contributors, minor contributors, etc. according to the magnitude of their contribution. The produced work is available free for users on the internet. This paper will explain the open source process and will provide justification for open source as an effective paradigm; it will also present some existing open source textbook projects, as well as the author’s own open source textbook project.

Evaluation Criteria on Methodological and Scientific Quality of the Musical EducationTextbook Projects in the Romanian Primary and Secondary Education – An Alternative Proposal to Reinforce the Formative Function of the Musical Education Textbooks

Abstract Now that in Romania there is a strong emphasis on the interaction between Knowledge, values, attitudes and behaviours, the curricular components such as curriculum plans, syllabuses, textbooks, guidebooks have by means of the teaching staff, a decisive role in the success of the educational reform. The present study is based on the analysis of the musical education textbooks used in the Romanian primary and secondary education and it aims to point out the formative value of the contents and to provide a set of evaluation criteria of the textbook projects. These criteria are in accordance to the discipline as a supporting tool for the authors’ work of designing textbooks as well as for those who evaluate these curricular products.

Memory and Democratic Pluralism in the Baltic States – Rethinking the Relationship

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKeywords: social memorypolitical memoryrecognitionrepresentationparticipationEstoniaLatviaLithuania Acknowledgements Financial support for this research came from a Targeted Financing Grant, no. SF0180128s08, from the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research. I would like to thank Vello Pettai, Siobhan Kattago and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article. Notes Notes 1 In Latvia, the annual commemoration day on March 16, at which the veterans of the former ‘Latvian Waffen-SS Legion’ commemorate their fallen comrades, has increasingly become a site for young people, radical Latvian nationalists and Russian-speakers, to protest. The demonstrations prior to and the riots surrounding the Estonian government decision to remove a Soviet-time war monument from downtown Tallinn are another example of a discord over issues of history and memory that is radicalizing. 2 In a study on Latvian memory politics after 1991, I have referred to this understanding of historical debates and controversies as a process of pluralization and diversification of opinions and interpretations of the past as a process of ‘democratizing history’ (Onken 2003 Onken, E-C. 2003. Demokratisierung der Geschichte in Lettland. Geschichtspolitik und staatsbürgerliches Bewusstsein im ersten Jahrzehnt der Unabhängigkeit, Hamburg: Krämer. [Google Scholar]). 3 A good example of such a mostly symbolic act of recognition was the campaign of the Broken Cornflower initiated by Estonian president Lennart Meri. In summer 2001 Meri conducted a two-week tour of Estonia, where he met personally with former victims of Soviet suppression and handed out symbolic mourning tokens bearing the insignia of a broken cornflower (the Estonian national flower) (Anepaio 2002 Anepaio, T. 2002. Reception of the Topic of Repression in Estonian Society. Pro EthnologiaI, 14: 47–65. [Google Scholar], p. 62). 4 Both in Estonia and Latvia the History Teachers’ Associations are quite actively involved in history teaching and school textbook projects. Most of these projects are supported by the ‘European Association of History Educators’, EUROCLIO of which they are full members. See http://www.euroclio.eu, accessed 11 August 2009. 5 Reinhart Koselleck speaks in this context quite memorably of the ‘six P's’, the priests, professors, PR specialists, politicians, poets and publicists (in Tamm 2007 Tamm, M. 2007. Kuidas kirjutatakse ajalugu? Intervjuuraamat, Tallinn: Varak. [Google Scholar], p. 115).

Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics (review)

Reviewed by: Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics Thomas W. Burkman (bio) Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics. By Jennifer Lind. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2008. x, 242 pages. $39.95. The fields of conflict resolution and interstate relations come together in this highly worthwhile first book by Jennifer M. Lind, a political scientist at Dartmouth College whose research and teaching interests lie in international politics and East Asian security. Her background includes visiting scholar appointments in Korea and France. The book is a comparative study of post-World War II Japanese-Korean and German-French relations, with a focus on the role of remembrance in the mending of relations marred by a legacy of brutality and holocaust. It is multistate in content, global in approach and application, and comparative throughout. The central question of the book is whether official contrition promotes reconciliation. After an introductory section laying out theoretical frameworks, two detailed narrative chapters treat the history and role of remembrance, contrition, and apology in the transition from enemy to neighbor in the cases of Japan and Germany, respectively. The process has been clearly more successful in the German case. The following chapter brings in the experiences of China, Australia, and Britain for additional cases of the process of reconciliation. A lengthy conclusion addresses the theories projected at the beginning and makes a number of assertions, including: reconciliation can occur without contrition, apologies cause backlash, apologies must be repeated, and unapologetic remembrance fuels distrust of intentions. Lind's strength is the great detail she delivers in narrating the process of Japan's and Germany's grappling since 1945 with their respective imperial wartime pasts. She divides each country's experience into three time frames. The first, from 1945 to 1965, saw both Japan and Germany in amnesia about their misdeeds, with Japanese even trying to exonerate their wartime goals. The prevailing mentality, furthered by the war crimes trials in both countries, asserted that a narrow clique of ruthless militarists had led the nations astray, victimizing the home populations as much as the people of neighboring countries. Lind is correct to question this assumption of the time, for indeed it is hard to find in pre-1945 Japan public or grass-roots sentiment of any sort that questioned the legitimacy of the nation's political and economic expansion on the continent. It is remarkable that in this first postwar period the French grew to regard Germany as their closest friend despite the absence of public contrition on Germany's part. Korea, on the other hand, harbored deep apprehensions that Japan would remilitarize and reassert its colonial claims. For the former colony, the fear of the resurgence [End Page 136] of the Japan of the past was the most powerful impulse defining its early postwar relations with Japan. In the second period, from 1965 to the 1980s, Korea and Japan normalized relations. Japan expressed some remorse and committed monetary aid, labeled "reparations," in the Korean version of the normalization treaty, but there was no admission of specific misdeeds. Disagreements over the past shifted to Korean dissatisfaction with historical treatments of colonialism and war in Japanese-sanctioned school textbooks and the enshrinement of the souls of 14 Class A war criminals in Yasukuni Shrine in 1978. In the next decade, prime ministers and cabinet members began to pay visits to the shrine in official capacity. In the same middle period, Germany under socialist leadership began to admit and atone for past crimes. It conducted its own trials of Nazi war criminals and instigated new reparations programs for victim populations previously overlooked. The German government stepped up political education to stem the rise of neofascist youth organizations and shifted the focus of war history from German suffering to German guilt. In the final period, from the 1980s to the present, Japan sends out mixed messages to victim peoples. While there is more official contrition, including a Diet resolution approved by the Lower House in 1995, apologetic statements typically have evoked right-wing backlash and new textbook projects to present an inspiring national legacy—which in turn enrage sensibilities in Korea and China. New museum renditions of history range from the downplay of the...

Open Textbook Proof-of-Concept via Connexions

To address the high cost of textbooks, Rice University’s Connexions and the Community College Open Textbook Project (CCOTP) collaborated to develop a proof-of-concept free and open textbook. The proof-of-concept served to document a workflow process that would support adoption of open textbooks. Open textbooks provide faculty and students with a low cost alternative to traditional publishers’ textbooks and can help to make higher education more affordable. Connexions provides a publishing platform for open textbook projects. The CCOTP acted as a liaison between community college faculty, open textbook authors, and Connexions. Challenges to the production and adoption of open textbooks include 1) faculty members’ and students’ expectations of high production quality and ancillaries for open textbooks, 2) methods for documenting and maintaining control over various versions, and 3) the process of converting existing open content to digital and accessible formats. Connexions holds promise as a means to overcome these challenges.&#x0D; &#x0D; Connexions identified lessons learned about open textbook production, such as the importance of a style guide, the advantage of assembly-line workflow, and the importance of naming conventions and standard math authoring tools, Connexions also identified lessons learned about open textbook use by students and faculty, e.g., the value of availability and customizability, the importance of interactivity, the difference in how faculty and students view modularity, and the importance of textbook reading navigational aids. The authors note that the CCOTP recommends using Connexions as the common repository for open textbook content in an effort to provide greater national and international access.

Nurturing Graduate Students: Integrative Scholarship through Textbook Projects

TEXTBOOKS ARE CONTROVERSIAL in sociology. Some professors refuse to use textbooks in their courses, believing that they are too simplistic. Others view textbooks as effective conduits of sociological knowledge. As an example of this latter position, a recent critique of current family textbooks created a furor in sociology and the national media because of their alleged bias (Glenn 1997; Footnotes 1998). Implicit in Glenn's critique was that textbooks impart learning. Further evidence of the importance of textbooks in the learning process is found in the Teaching Sociology special issue devoted to textbooks (1988; see also Agger 1989; and Kendall 1999). The corporatization of textbooks is yet another area of concern. With the increased frequency of mergers among publishing companies, there are not only fewer publishing outlets but also increasing pressures on authors to clone successful books, thereby squelching creativity. An additional controversy involving textbooks is whether they are limited only to transmitting existing knowledge (Tischler 1988). From this position, textbook writing is neither scholarly nor creative. We argue, to the contrary, that textbooks are not limited to the synthesis of existing materials in marketable ways, but that they are capable of actually shaping the

Interlending and document supply: a review of recent literature – XXVIII

Reviews the recent literature in electronic document delivery and “the electronic library”. Describes current trials of various retrieval systems of electronic journal and textbook projects, and examines some of the costs and benefits experienced by institutions around the world, focusing in particular on developments in Germany. Finds copyright on electronic delivery services to be a problem and briefly addresses patenting and trademarks. Also assesses the idea of charges for interlibrary transactions. Finally, reviews the state of the Universal Availability of Publications programme to date, reporting on resource sharing with Africa and the Caribbean.

School Textbook Projects in Interreligious and International Co‐operation

School Textbook Projects in Interreligious and International Co‐operation