Textbooks

As ubiquitous objects in classrooms often sanctioned by governments around the world, textbooks merit researchers' attention. Textbooks are conceptualized in a variety of ways in the robust literature: as key elements of teaching and learning filled with vocabulary, concepts, narratives, and didactic activities; as contested mechanisms conveying sociocultural categories of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability; as primary carriers of official knowledge framing issues of socialization, identity, inequality, inclusion/exclusion, and ideology; and as artifacts that reveal insights into complex ideas and processes of nation building, the construction of knowledge, diffusion of reforms and discourses (e.g., human rights, environmentalism, egalitarianism), and citizenship. Whether the methodological orientation of the study is the production process or whether researchers examine the [Page 795]consumption of the material by teachers and ...