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Textbooks in the Developing World: Economic and Educational Choices

Joseph P. Farrell, Stephen P. Heyneman (eds.)

Washington, DC: World Bank;Economic Development Institute (EDI) (1989), xi, 219 pp.

"A collection of 16 papers that focus on what has been learned in two decades of developing and implementing large-scale national textbook programmes, and the World Bank’s role in assisting textbook development. Organized into four parts it covers (1) The Design and Implementation of Textbook Prog ... more

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Textbooks in the Third World: Policy, Content and Context

Philip G. Altbach, Gail P. Kelly (eds.)

New York: Garland Publishing (1988), xii, 277 pp.

"A volume of essays on government and international agency policies regarding the provision of textbooks in developing countries, analysing problems and constraints, and examining the economic, social, and pedagogic questions involved in textbook writing for both primary and secondary schools and fo ... more

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Textbooks in the Philippines: Evaluation of the Pedagogical Impact of a Nationwide Investment

Stephen P. Heyneman, Dean T. Jamison, Xenia Montenegro

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, volume 6, issue 2 (1984), pp. 139-150

"The Philippine government, with the assistance of the World Bank, launched the $US37 million Textbook Project to alleviate the lack of textbooks in the nation's public schools. Prior to this investment, there was an average of 10 pupils for every book available in a given subject. During the first ... year of implementation, the Textbook Project produced ap-proximately 20 million first and second grade textbooks in science, mathematics, and Pilipino. These were distributed nationwide in the 1977-78 school year at a ratio of two pupils per book. In the course of its 5-year duration, the Textbook Project would produce 97 million books covering all subject areas from first grade through high school and would distribute enough so that there would be only two students per book at each grade level in each subject. Books cost an average of US$.55 each (for an average length of 180 pages); the overall program increased per student costs by about 1% (Orivel, 1979). Teacher training in the use of the books was part of the project. These and other aspects of implementation are described in detail by Aprieto (1983). Textbook content was geared closely to the national curriculum and tightly screened for clarity of presentation. Photo and colors were used judiciously. Because books were expected to be in use for up to 5 years, binding and stitching were of high quality. Distribution was made first to regional warehouses, then to municipalities, then to schools. Arrival time and textbook condition in the nation's 100,000 schools were monitored by computer in the capital. The success of the project was due not to simply having new textbooks, but rather to having new textbooks of high quality, reasonably on time, well understood, and well used by teachers. The Evaluation Section of the Textbook Project was formed primarily to investigate the effects of this sizable investment on student achievement. One year before the first sets of textbooks were distributed, an evaluation plan was designed, and instruments were developed to measure these effects. The plan was implemented during the first year of textbook distribution and has been a continuing component of the Textbook Project. The results presented here were obtained from the first-year evaluation data, otherwise known as Phase I. The effects of textbooks on achievement in conjunction with pupil, home, school, and environmental variables were examined, the primary concern being the increment in the achievement of pupils, given the use of the project textbooks, while other influencing factors were controlled." (Page 141) more