Creation and Application of a Model for Assessing Secondary School Mathematics Textbooks

This article presents the creation and application of a model for assessing mathematics textbooks with a view to helping teachers to choose the textbook which most closely meets their specific needs with regard to the teaching/learning process. This instrument for textbook assessment is based on existing models, some of which deal with general aspects of education while others are specific to the area of mathematics teaching. A detailed study of these pre-existing models highlights both points of contact and discrepancies. A method the authors call "accumulation" was used to obtain a group of analytical indicators that served as a working model. This was used to assess a series of textbooks. There was also a questionnaire filled out by expert teachers in order to establish the model's validity. Thus a model was constructed for assessing mathematics textbooks, structured around a series of organizers evaluated by a number of analysis indicators. This model allows for the assessment of a wide range of aspects stemming from textbook use which are essential to teaching. This assessment model, along with the underlying methodology, can be used in several ways: the model can be applied in its entirety, or it may be limited to certain organizers; furthermore, the entire model or the chosen organizers can be used to assess either an entire textbook or certain content units.