ABSTRACT
Textbooks, along with teacher talk, serve as the primary vehicles for knowledge acquisition in classrooms. Schallert and Kleiman (1979), in comparing textbooks with teachers, pointed out four disadvantages of textbooks. Textbooks have: (a) less likelihood of “tailoring” content to individual learners with different knowledge, interests, and skills; (b) less likelihood of activating old information and linking new information to old; (c) less likelihood of focusing attention of students on particular pieces of information; and (d) less likelihood of monitoring comprehension and recall of content. Schallert and Kleiman suggested that to learn from text students must learn to understand material that is not as well adapted to them as teachers’ presentations may be.
