How students view the role of the textbook nature and society in the adoption of social contents

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a study of the opinion of the fourth grade primary school students (N=60) from Sombor, Serbia, about the role of the textbook Nature and Society in the adoption of social contents. The aim of the study is to determine students’ opinions about how the textbook assists them in adopting social contents and how this knowledge can be useful in the real life context, which can be a relevant starting point for improving the quality of textbooks. Qualitative methodology was used to analyse the obtained data. Focus group discussions pointed to problems about the presentation of social contents in the textbooks: extensive texts that must be memorised; the lack of explanations in the text; insufficient coherence of the text, which is the reason why the adoption of social contents require assistance in the interpretation of the text. Moreover, there is a problem in the relation between the text and visual displays; the examples given do not sound familiar to students, the text is not related to the real life context, which limits the usability of social knowledge adopted from the textbook. The students’ answers refer to key standards of the textbook quality (the quality of the contents, the quality of the didactic design, the quality of the language used in the textbook), and indicate that the textbook that students use does not contribute to the process of learning complex social phenomena.

Keywords

• social phenomena
• fourth-grade students
• focus-group interviews
• textbook of Nature and Society