A Descriptive Qualitative Summary Analysis of an Important Correlation among Factors in Textbook Selection

Proceedings International Conference on Teaching and Education (ICoTE) Volume 4: English Language Teaching in Indonesia (March 2024) A Descriptive Qualitative Summary Analysis of an Important Correlation among Factors in Textbook Selection Kresensia Aprilla Master Study Program of English Language Education Teacher Training and Education Faculty, Tanjungpura University –INDONESIA DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26418/icote.v4i1.56125 Abstract Selecting the proper textbook to be used during the teaching-learning process is a quite complicated process. The selection process is taken not only by teachers but also by other possible people, for instance the government or the curriculum committee of the education institution. Therefore, whoever finalize the decision on choosing the textbook, then its selection process must acquire the fit or the balance correlation between the textbooks and these three factors: the students, the teachers, and the curriculum. In this paper, the author will focus on describing the important correlation between these three factors with the textbook during the textbook selection process. Shortly, this descriptive qualitative analysis summary article may also help the teachers or the educators, especially, to give full attention to these factors to select the perfect textbooks to be used as the sources during the teaching-learning processes. In addition, it is also hoped that the students will be eased and have a better understanding of the lesson material and the source of information when the teachers succeed in selecting the textbooks by keeping these three factors in mind. Keywords: Textbooks, Selection of Textbook, Teaching-Learning Sources. 1. INTRODUCTION A textbook in the teaching and learning process is one of the essential tools for teachers and students. In real learning processes, there are a few teachers enter the class without bringing or using textbooks and also it is a rare sight when the students study the lesson without any references, especially a textbook. Most teachers will teach in the class with the textbooks as one of their sources of references. Most of the students rely on textbooks as one of their sources of information whenever they need to look up a better understanding of the lesson material and the additional information mentioned by the teachers. In many circumstances, there are at least three different situations when the teachers finally use particular textbooks (Marrianne Celce, 2001). To begin with, in many countries, the textbooks are used because they are according to the requirement sources set by the government or the staff of education ministry. This situation actually brings equality or parity to all the schools within the country itself. Further, more likely, there will be no big gap in education in terms of textbooks between the schools in the city and rural areas because all schools use the same textbooks. Then, second scenario or situation is when each school has the authority to decide the textbooks to be used in their teaching-learning process according to their regulated curriculum. In this kind of situation, the final decision in choosing a certain textbook to be used by the school is on the curriculum staff or committee of the school which has been approved by the institute’s stakeholders which is the school. Moreover, the third situation is when the teachers have the authority and right in selecting and deciding the textbook that will be used during their teaching and learning processes. This situation is applied when the schools and the government give the teachers full access to set their curriculum. Then, each situation results in the advantages and disadvantages impacts on the teachers, students, and the schools. In the first situation, when the government has its full authority, it brings equality across the education institution within the country. However, the teachers must need legal approval 34 whenever they need to add different textbooks as supplement references. Therefore, the students as individual learners who implement many different ways of studies are forced to use the same learning sources. Meanwhile, the second situation, more likely brings the competitiveness among the educational institutes or schools. The hotter the competition is the better. The schools will try to implement the best curriculum and over to use the best textbooks for the teacher and the students. Nevertheless, most of these situations happen to force the students to buy the textbooks required by school. Thus, the price is considerably high. Even though it is affordable, however, there is a possibility that the textbook does not fit the needs of the teachers. The last situation encourages the teachers to apply their abilities of class analysis to list their needs and their creativity in creating and setting their own curriculum in the class. On the other hand, it brings a lot of difficulties and complexities to the teacher as well. The teachers are insisted on preparing the lesson sources, then, teaching, observing and evaluating the students’ progress from scratch at the same time. An individual teacher will be swamped, especially if that teacher teaches a large population in the class and also cross-level within the school. Moreover, all the teachers across the countries teach not only one class at one level. Thus, selecting a proper textbook to be used in the teaching-learning process is not an easy duty. It is relatively complicated. The process of selecting the textbook in whichever scenario applied must be able to fit the correlation between the textbook and these three factors: the students, the teachers, and the curriculum. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. The Fit between Text and Curriculum A curriculum is defined as any document or plan that exists in a school or school system that defines the teachers’ work, at least to the extent of identifying the content to be taught to children and the possible methods to be used in the process (English, 2000). Hence, to avoid the teaching-learning material that straddles the fence, the curriculum must be based on the blueprint to create and produce the material of textbooks. Furthermore, each of three situations need different approaches between the fit of the textbook selection and the curriculum. First, for a larger educational system, the government is in charge of creating, designing, and publishing the curriculum. The teachers are forced to teach the students according to the required curriculum released by the government. In this larger educational system, the government have already planned and set the required curriculum and also managed the whole process of textbook selection, they also have chosen particular publishers to proceed with the textbook mass production. Moreover, these publishers also create lesson materials in the textbook based on published curriculum statements released by the government. Hence, in this situation, three important roles m (...truncated)