Retrospective evaluations of elementary and secondary school textbooks: Perspectives from teachers of English

Abstract

With having recognized that there is lack of studies that take interest in the retrospective evaluations of textbooks, the present study takes separate interest in obtaining teachers’ opinions from post-use evaluations of textbooks. The 273 teacher-evaluators, who consisted of in-service and pre-service teachers from different parts of the country, were asked to respond to the questionnaire regarding their post-use evaluations of textbooks by asking them to rate the importance of 25 evaluation criteria that took analytic and holistic approaches. The results indicated that, amid situational constraints, teachers valued materials that are topically interesting and motivating, linguistically accurate and grammatical, appropriate to the students’ cognitive and affective levels, and balanced in the use of four language skills. Regarding different school level, teachers at secondary schools (i.e., middle and high schools) in comparison to those at the elementary school level generally identified the criteria to be relatively more important for what textbooks should provide. In order to bring optimal learning benefits to L2 learners, the study underscores the value of retrospective evaluations for the identification of problems that may transpire from the textbook or/and situational constraints.