end of project report final - · PDF filerepresentations of the digestive system and of ... attending to page format and grid, number of ... type of standard notation one would find

End of Award Report: Gains and Losses - Gunther Kress & Jeff Bezemer

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End of Award Report

Project title: Gains and Losses: Changes in Representation, Knowledge and Pedagogy in Learning Resources.

Principal Investigator: Professor Gunther Kress

Co-Investigator: Dr Jeff Bezemer

Reference: RES-062-23-0224

Duration of project: 01/01/2007-31/06/2009

Date of this report: 01/09/2009

Background The project has produced an empirical account of historical changes in secondary school textbooks in England and their implications for learning. Its social semiotic approach was innovative in that

• We reviewed 75 learning resources across core subjects of the national curriculum, English, Science and Mathematics;

• We focused on how the various professionals involved in producing textbooks –authors, illustrators, designers– use their distinctive expressive resources –writing, drawing, layout– to identify learners and shape their engagement with the subject;

• We adopted a social-historical perspective, comparing (writing-led) textbooks from 1930s and 1980s with contemporary (visually-led) textbooks, exploring the social and pedagogic implications of changes in the technology and design of learning resources.

Our account was produced against the backdrop of growing concerns about perceived changes in the ‘look’ of textbooks, such as the increased use of images, and their implications for learning. To some observers this threatens literacy, must lead to a general ‘dumbing down’ and is bound to have deleterious effects on economic performance. Less prominent, if equally firmly expressed, are beliefs in the empowering potential of such changes (Kaplan 1995). The project aimed to a) check the assumption that ‘something has changed’ in the use of image and other modes of communication in textbooks; b) develop an understanding of the gains and losses involved in those changes in design for learning, knowledge production and literacies in the 21st century. The foundations of our social semiotic approach were laid in previous ESRC-funded projects led by the Principal Investigator (The Rhetorics of the Science Classroom; R000236931; and The Production of School English; R000238463). Two characteristics of the methodology are that i) it ascribes meaning to all modes of communication in textbooks, including image, writing, typography and layout; and ii) it treats signs of any kind as reflecting the interests of the makers of these signs – here curriculum planners, textbook designers, teachers. In each of the modes semiotic work – attending, engaging, transforming, integrating, ordering


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- is done by makers and users of textbooks. In one mode more semiotic work is to be done by the learner, in another, simultaneously present mode, more work has been done for the reader by the designer. Textbook design is based on such ‘division of labour’, and only by looking at the entire, multimodal design can we reconstruct these complex social relations. Objectives In the research proposal we formulated the following objectives.

1. Provide a theoretical framework for understanding the intricate relation between learning potentials and the graphic design of textbooks and electronic resources for secondary school students;

2. Provide an overview of the historical changes in the graphic design of learning materials from 1930 to the present and their ramifications for learning;

3. Provide a characterization of graphic designs and their differential learning potentials as a practical tool for reflection on designing and teaching.

We have marked the parts in the remainder of this report that correspond with the respective objectives. The theoretical framework (Objective 1) is detailed below under ‘Methods’. We present the historical overview (Objective 2) after our characterization of textbook designs and their differential learning potentials (Objective 3). Methods Data set We compiled a data set of 92 excerpts from 59 textbooks for English, Science and Mathematics, published in the 1930s, 1980s and 2000s, totalling 700 pages. These were randomly chosen from card and electronic catalogues of the library of the Institute of Education, University of London, the largest collection of textbooks in England. For reasons of comparability, each subject was represented by a ‘stable’ curricular issue across that period. In English, this was Poetry, in Science Digestion and Electric circuits, in Mathematics Angles and Fractions. We indexed, digitized and saved all excerpts as PDF-documents to enhance our analysis and future use of the data base by third parties. Table 1 details the number of textbooks, textbook excerpts and pages in the data set by subject.

N Textbooks Excerpts Pages

English 23 29 240

Science 19 31 276

Mathematics 17 32 187

Total 59 92 703

Table 1: Data set by number of textbooks, excerpts and pages


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For each combination of ‘era’ (1930s, 1980s, 2000s) and subject (English, Science, Mathematics) we made an initial selection of 8 to 12 excerpts. We derived four subsets from the corpus, covering image-representations of the digestive system and of electric circuits, poems, and angles. Informally, we collected 6 textbooks for secondary education from Germany, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Japan and Brazil. We reviewed 16 electronic learning resources, addressing topics from the National Curriculum for English, Science and Mathematics. Objective 1: Develop a framework for understanding the multimodal design of textbooks We developed a framework that brings together Social Semiotics, notably for image; Discourse Analysis, notably for writing; and Graphic Design, notably for typography and layout. It assumes that conditions for learning are shaped by every sign in every mode operating in a textbook. For image, we drew a distinction between photography and drawing; we attended to the ‘provenance’ of the images; and we analysed ‘contextualisation’, ‘colour’, ‘pictorial detail’, ‘illumination’, ‘depth’ and ‘movement’ (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006). We attended to the ‘status relations’ between image and writing, drawing on Barthes (1977) and Martinec & Salway (2005). For writing we looked at mood and clause relations, drawing on Halliday (1985), Hodge & Kress (1988) and Fairclough (2003); for typography, we drew on Stöckl’s (2005) ‘toolkit’ for analyzing type and resources such as spacing, orientation, indentation and typographic emphasis. Lastly, we focused on the layout of pages: attending to page format and grid, number of columns per page, column width, and orientation and alignment of page elements (Ambrose & Harris 2005; Haslam 2006). For speech, we focused on mood, clause relations and the use of intonation (Halliday 1967). Where it seemed appropriate, we counted the occurrences of certain modal realizations in texts across the three eras, to establish whether the use of a mode had changed diachronically or whether we were dealing with synchronic variation.

Image Writing Typography Layout Speech

spatial detail pictorial detail depth colour background movement

mood sentence

structure semantic clause

relations grammatical

clause relations

pragmatic interactions

with reader, ideological

underpinnings,

type face, size, colour

letter fit word spacing line spacing indentation boxing background

page size ‘spread’ columns image-writing

alignment image and

writing boundaries

captions/figure numbers

writing alignment

background placement disposition on

the page

mood semantic

clause relations

grammatical clause relations

intonation

Table 2: Framework for analyzing multimodal textbook design


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Results Main findings:

• Typography, image, writing and layout contribute to meaning in textbooks in ways significant for learning. Typography and image are used to construct and differentiate between different imagined abilities as much as writing does (cf. highlighting words which are assumed to be ‘difficult’ for certain potential readers; using ‘abstract’ representations of an electric circuit for ‘advanced’ readers). This has important implications for researching and evaluating textbooks and learning more widely: The environments set up for learners to engage with aspects of the world cannot be fully understood without due attention to all modes operating in that environment.

• Use of typography, image, writing and layout has changed between 1930 and now, in ways significant for learning. Layout is now a major resource for constructing the learning environment, connecting parts of the text through their arrangement on a two-page spread which were previously held together by cohesive devices in writing. This is significant for learning as a) layout affords the designer to produce forms of cohesion and composition which the ‘author’ cannot achieve- and vice versa: for instance a modular instead of a linear organization; b) these new forms of composition need to be understood by the learner.

• For producers of textbooks the changes in design suggest a shift in their social relations, for instance where the designer now takes responsibility for coherence, which was previously the domain of the author. For users of textbooks the changes in design demand new forms of ‘literacy’; a fluency not only in ‘reading’ writing, image, typography and layout jointly, but in the overall design of learning environments. The changes in the design of textbooks are indicative of shifts in agency, authority and responsibility across producers and users, for instance where previously reading paths were fixed by producers they may now be left to the learner.

• The radical shift in textbook design could be described – wrongly - in terms of ‘dumbing down’; or, as we suggest, in terms of the gains and losses in wider social changes and features of the contemporary media landscape. Lost are certain forms of written complexity, stability, canonicity and vertical power structures. Gained are ‘horizontal’, more open, participatory relations in the production of knowledge, blurring former distinctions within and across production and consumption, writing and reading, and teaching and learning.

The following sections provide more detail.


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Objective 3: Providing a characterization of textbook designs and their differential learning potentials Typography (and layout) Excerpts 1 and 2 contain poems, accompanied by writing relating to the poems.

Excerpt 1 Excerpt 2 The two differ typographically and in layout. In Excerpt 1, poem and ‘materials’ are clearly separate, as ‘main item’ and ‘technical resource’. In Excerpt 2, poem and supplementary materials are integrated, using leader lines to connect the ‘annotations’ to parts of the poem. Excerpt 2 uses bolding to highlight ‘difficult words’, glossed in a separate text box. The poem is placed in a different colour to that framing the pedagogic materials. Excerpt 1 presents the poem as separate, with a literary and pedagogic ‘apparatus’ to be used as a resource. Excerpt 2 presents the poem with several layers of meanings super-posed, doing semiotic work which in 1 is left to the reader. In Excerpt 1 only line numbers are added to the poem; in Excerpt 2 the poem is fully drawn into a pedagogic framing: it has become a pedagogic rather than a literary object. We might hypothesize that the designers of Excerpt 2 envisage learners as unwilling or unable to engage with the poem in its ‘pure’ form; alternatively we might assume that the designers treat the ‘poem’ as a pedagogic object, as text-material for a specific pedagogic purpose, not immediately for its poetic characteristics. Engagement and pedagogic relations with a pedagogic object and an aesthetic one are very different.


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Image The electric circuit is a common image in Science textbooks. Excerpts 3-7 show five such representations. Excerpt 3 is highly abstracted, the type of standard notation one would find in the world of physics to which the learner is inducted. Excerpt 4 uses the same notation with annotations that ‘translate’ ‘visual symbols’ into writing. Excerpt 5 moves away from highly abstracted representation, making the circuit look more ‘real’ (‘realism’ seen as a social semiotic construct) – in ‘everyday’ terms - by providing pictorial detail of the ‘components’, such as electric devices and wires. Excerpt 6 uses colour and depth, making it look yet more real than Excerpt 5. Excerpt 7 offers background, making it more ‘realistic’ still. The examples show how the modal resources of image can be used to assign different disciplinary and semiotic tasks to textbook makers and users. In altering – here increasing - the degree of ‘realism’, the textbook contextualizes the image-as-concept differently – closer to or more distant from some life-world; it relies on the learner to abstract from ‘concrete’ instances and do the semiotic work of inferring generalizations about electric circuits.

Writing In textbooks of English, writing may be used to set the historical context of a poem. In Mamour (1934: 89), John Milton’s L’Allegro is introduced: “The dominating figure of this age is John Milton, the great Puritan poet; but he is so supremely an artist that he blends the perfection of ancient art, as learnt from the Renaissance, with the religious turmoil of his time, which has so profound an effect on his work.” In Brindle, Machin & Thomas (2002: 100-101) Denise Levertov’s What were they like? is introduced using a bullet-point list of sentences: “The war lasted from 1959 to 1975”; “Communist North Vietnam was fighting South Vietnam.” These two instances of writing differ in ‘non-formal’ and formal ways. In 1934 there are discourses of ‘aesthetics’ and of ‘(literary) history’, offering ‘certainty’ and ‘sensibility’; in 2002 there is a discourse of ‘factuality’ allied with a genre of documentary. Formally, there are twice as many clauses per sentence in the former than in the latter (2.6 versus 1.3). That syntactic complexity establishes relations among clauses in its sentences, and these cover a wide range of relations (e.g., causal, additive, contrastive, elaboration). That is, in 1934, the ordering of


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propositions is seen as the task of the ‘author’, articulated in the syntax of writing as a means of constructing knowledge. In 2002, much of the semiotic work (forming ‘connections’ and making interpretation) is left to the graphic designers, learners and teachers.

Excerpt 8 Layout Excerpt 1 is set on a single page, using two columns per page. All text is aligned horizontally and vertically. There is no background colour. In Excerpt 8 – a response to the Vietnam War – the two-page spread is tessellated with full-colour graphic elements overprinted on a decorative background of butterflies. The left-hand page contains five separate textual ‘chunks’. Proximity and (small) overlaps suggest connection, somehow. This differential use of modes suggests a division of some kind: image for two chunks, writing for three, potentially signifying a functional distinction. This is reiterated through the tilting of the images –opposed to the straight positioning of the blocks of writing – one suggesting casualness, one formality - an implied ontological difference of writing and image. The layout suggests ‘assemblage’, bringing together different materials and representations. This puts differences in writing between Excerpts 1 and 8 into perspective: the ordering of propositions is more articulated in writing in 1, and differently yet equally strongly in layout, in 8. The linear layout in Excerpt 1 is the semiotic work of an ‘author’; the non-linear layout in Excerpt 8 is the semiotic work of the graphic designer. Speech In electronic learning resources, image, speech, writing, can be used simultaneously; here, to demonstrate how to rotate an angle using a


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compass. We might assume that the ‘voice-over’ simply parallels what is written; if we analyse speech and writing, we see that each provides distinct learning environments. In this animation (lgfl.skoool.co.uk), the designer uses intonation in speech to draw attention to elements with major pitch movement, here to object involved – ‘compass’; to location – ‘point a’; to extent of action – ‘out’; etc; and in writing uses syntax to draw attention to elements mentioned first – action to be performed: put, open out, draw – and to imperative mood, foregrounding action as command. In this contrapuntal organization, writing highlights action-as-commands – put, open out, draw – and speech highlights objects and attendant circumstances - location, shape.

Excerpt 9 Moving image The example uses the mode of moving image, a ‘still’ of which is shown here as Excerpt 9. It combines the affordances of still image, joining spatial with temporal organization: action unfolds in time. That brings distinct increases in semiotic possibility. Elements can now appear and disappear so that movement can be suggested. In the scene referred to here, the triangle is the first element to appear; the compass then appears, with its pointer at ‘A’. There is the ‘opening out’ of the compass and the inscription of a curve; the compass then disappears. Moving image represents the demonstration of how to use a compass differently from the written and spoken text-elements: it is specific about what ‘opening out’ is and what ‘drawing a curve’ entails: a movement of the compass whereby one of its legs, A, retains its position while the other leg C, which leaves a trace, makes a clockwise turn. Objective 2: Providing an overview of historical changes in the design of learning materials and their ramifications for learning Typography Variation in type-face has increased significantly. Until the late 1980s usually one font was used consistently throughout a textbook; typically, in textbooks from the 2000s, different fonts are used for different parts of the text. In English textbooks investigated here, the poem, the introduction, instructions and annotations about what to do, are set in different fonts. From the late 1980s, type-face is used to separate out


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different curricular and pedagogic entities. Further, designers use the meaning potentials of type-face to suggest meanings of different entities: the literary ‘feel’ of serif is used for poems, handwritten font to represent annotations as ‘notes’, as provisional, unpolished. Instructions or exercises may be set in sans serif, suggesting they are transparent, straightforward and unambiguous. Indentation is in decline; boxing and/or background colouring are now common features. These mark boundaries between parts of the text sharply, suggesting that they operate as separate entities. The shift from indentation to boxing/colouring points to a modal change: written elements are increasingly acting like graphic entities, themselves connected not through cohesive devices of writing but through the layout of the page. The former linearity of writing is giving way to the modular organization of layout. Image Images are often not made up of discrete entities; that makes ‘counting’ difficult. Frequently it is far from obvious whether a representation counts as one image or as two. Quantifying the use of modes becomes even more complex when one mode starts acting like another, for instance when writing is placed in a box, as a module. Despite this, we have attempted to count the number of images. The outcomes are perhaps unsurprising: the number of images in textbooks for English has increased from an average of virtually none in the1930s (0.03 images per page) to 2 in every 4 pages (0.54 images per page) in 1980s, to 3 in every four pages (0.74 images per page) in the 2000s. Compared to Science and Mathematics, this number is still rather low, but it is by far the biggest increase for those three subjects: between 1930 and now, the number of representations of electric circuits has multiplied by seven. In other words, while visual representation has always featured in Science textbooks, it is now much more frequent than before. The same applies to Mathematics, where the number of representations of angles has tripled, rising from near 3 to near 9 images of angles per page. What these figures do not reveal is that image has changed in terms of its place in the overall design of textbooks. In Science textbooks, for instance, image used to sit alongside a detailed written account of visual features of, say, the digestive system. Now such visualisations are entirely left to image, making it essential for the learner to ‘read’ the image alongside the writing and shift their attention between the two forms of representation. Our review of some Japanese textbooks further suggests that the potential of image goes well beyond the representation of physical objects. In these designs processes such as the production of enzymes and breaking down of food are all expressed in image, while writing merely provides the labels for those processes and objects. We have not seen such designs in our English corpus of textbooks as yet.


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Writing Writing has changed significantly. For our purposes, we will call writing in textbooks from the 1930s ‘traditional’, based on units such as chapter, paragraph, sentence. There were more clauses per sentence then than in the textbooks from the 2000s. As a consequence, older textbooks established more relations among clauses in sentences, and these covered a wider range of types of relations than now. These factors could be interpreted as indicators of a ‘loss’ in ‘complexity’. In contemporary science textbooks, writing is moving away decisively from the use of ‘traditional writing’. If syntactic complexity were to be equated with cognitive complexity, the conclusion would be that contemporary textbooks are cognitively less demanding. We argue that the questions ought to be: ‘What kinds of complexity are there; where do these lie; what are the features and characteristics of ‘complexity’?’ and ‘What kinds of semiotic work are being done, by an for whom, in the text overall?’ In the 1930s the ‘author’ ordered propositions in writing, one means of producing a coherent text-as-knowledge. Now, much of the work of producing coherence and, in that, of producing knowledge, is done by users of the textbook. This shift in agency is tied in with contemporary allocations of agency, forms of (collaborative) authorship, themselves linked to a move away from traditional understandings of ‘knowledge’. Layout The format of the textbook has changed, allowing for changes in layout. Textbooks from the 1930s are A5 sized or smaller. Their pages are, typically, designed following a rigid grid, in a single column, with consistent margins, baselines, headers and footers, allowing the writing to flow continuously from one column to the next from top left to bottom right; it runs across pages. In the 2000s, the book is bigger, and we see a move away from the rather rigid, writing-driven grid which was common in the 1980s. Most textbooks now use varying numbers of columns per page, varying column widths, allowing writing to be ‘wrapped around’ - often irregularly shaped - images. Writing may still be running across pages but more often page breaks coincide with separations of different parts of the text, marked off by line boxes and background colours. This allows the designer to produce forms of cohesion and composition which the author, when still ‘in charge’ of that, did not have, and which the learner did not encounter. For instance, the designer can suggest a modular organization of the text and create a multiplicity of reading paths rather than suggesting a linear reading path, fixing the order in which learners engage with various parts of the text. Speech and moving image Speech and moving image are now used in some learning resources on the web. The use of these two modes has become widely available to designers and users of learning environments through the medium of the screen. We have indicated that these modes have specific effects in shaping the learning environment, hence any replacement of textbooks


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with electronic learning resources will have profound implications for learning, well beyond notions of ‘effectiveness’ or ‘personalization’ The displacement of the spatial organization of writing and of still image by the temporal organization of speech and moving image – of the ‘static’ replaced by the ‘dynamic’, the ‘still’ by ‘motion’ – will have profound effects on forms of knowledge and learning. Gains and Losses Our research has shown that in the 1930s, ‘authors’ were in control of the development of textbooks, constructing relations between ‘propositions’ and sentences. Over the following 70 years these relations have increasingly come to be established by teachers and learners as ‘interpreters’. This might seem evidence both of a loss of complexity and of security of knowledge. That view however, takes no account of concurrent social/pedagogic changes, leading to developments in layout. Layout is the new mode on the block. It allows textbook designers to articulate relations between elements and ‘propositions’, some previously made in image or in writing and to make or suggest types of relations which may not have been possible before. The older forms of text, with relations fully spelled out, fitted a period in which power was distributed in favour of authority. Now users – teachers and students - need to attend to layout much more than before. It also means that the role of the graphic designer has become more and other than that which the typesetter used to have. In many respects the graphic designer is now an ‘author’ while learners (re-)design materials in their interpretations. Both need to be understood by those who wish to understand contemporary environments of learning. Activities The Advisory Board met twice, on 17 October 2007 and on 5 February 2009. Members included Claire Drinkwater, John Hardcastle, Carey Jewitt, Diane Mavers, Candia Morgan, Michael Reiss and Gemma Moss. We presented the project in lectures for

• (ESRC-funded) ‘Ethnography, Language and Communication Researcher Development’ Initiative for advanced doctoral and postdoctoral researchers;

• MA TESOL (Teaching English as a Second or Other Language), MA Effective Learning and MA MFL (Modern Foreign Languages), Institute of Education;

• Programme for high-level Russian Linguist visitors;

• Staff and students of MA Design, University of the Arts. With colleagues from the Centre for Multimodal Research we organized an international conference on Multimodality and Learning (June 2008),


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bringing together 120 delegates from across the world sharing an interest in multimodality and learning. We drew on the project in our contributions to the ‘Knowledge, Creativity and Communication’ Challenge of the Beyond Current Horizons programme (Futurelab with the DCSF). We presented findings from the project to a German-Swedish-English group of researchers on Learning and New Media, in Goteborg, London, Kassel, Berlin and Stockholm. An end of project dissemination event was held at the Institute of Education, 31 March 2009, (Dr Gemma Moss and John Yandell acted as discussants), followed by discussion with an audience of teachers, researchers, publishers and designers. Outputs Publications (indicative selection) Bezemer, J. & G. Kress (2008). Writing in multimodal texts: a social

semiotic account of designs for learning. Written Communication 25, 2, 166-195 (Special Issue on Writing and New Media).

Kress, G. & J. Bezemer (2009). Writing in a Multimodal World of Representation. In Roger Beard, Debra Myhill, Martin Nystrand and Jeni Riley (eds), SAGE Handbook of Writing Development. London: Sage. (pp. 167-181).

Bezemer, J. & G. Kress (2009). Visualizing English: A Social Semiotic History of a School Subject. Visual Communication 8, 247-262. Special Issue on Information Environments.

Kress, G. & J. Bezemer (2009). In: Knowledge, Creativity and Communication in Education: Multimodal Design. In: C. Jewitt, Beyond Current Horizons. Futurelab.

Kress, G. R. (2009) What is mode? In C. Jewitt (ed) Routledge Handbook of multimodal analysis London: Routledge (pp 54-67).

Kress, G. & J. Bezemer (in press). La escritura en un mundo multimodal de representación. In Judith Kalman and Brian Street: Lectura, escritura y matématicas como prácticas sociales. Dialogos con América Latina. Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores.

Bezemer, J. & C. Jewitt (in press). Qualitative Research Methods: Multimodal Analysis. In: L. Litosseliti (ed), Research Methods in Linguistics. London: Continuum.

Bezemer, J. & G. Kress (in press). Gains and Losses: A Social Semiotic Study of Textbook Design for Secondary Education. Korean Journal of Textbook Education.

Bezemer, J. & G. Kress (submitted). Visualizing Science. Changes in Textbook Design and their Implications for Learning. Submitted to Studies in Science in Education.


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Conferences (indicative selection) Project presented (as keynotes/invited/ symposia) at

• International Conference on Learning (Johannesburg, June, 2007) paper

• American Educational Research Association (NYC, March, 2008) symposium

• International Association of Applied Linguistics (Essen, August, 2008) symposium

• International Symposium on the School Textbook (Kongju, Korea, October, 2008) keynote

• Writing Education in the ‘Knowledge Society’ Conference (University of Trondheim, November 2008) keynote

• International Association for Research in Textbooks and Educational Media (Santiago, Spain, September 2009) keynote

Data sets A data set of 92 excerpts from 59 different textbooks for English, Science and Mathematics, 1930 to 2005; chosen from card and electronic catalogues of the library of the Institute of Education. Within English, on Poetry; Science on Digestion and Electric circuits; Mathematics on Angles and Fractions. All excerpts indexed, digitized and saved as PDF-documents. With reference to this dataset, the Acquisitions Review Committee of the UKDA decided that they are unable to accept the materials into their collections due to consent issues (ref Acq4123/KS, April 14th 2009). Impacts Our findings produced much interest from users, including teachers (notably those working in the highly textbook-driven area of English as a Second or Foreign Language) and researchers (notably those working in multimodality and education studies), as well as graphic designers and textbook publishers. Practitioners in these areas are often aware of the significance of the use image alongside writing in textbooks but they have no framework at their disposal which allows them to systematically review the implications of image and writing for learning. We have discussed our findings with them on numerous formal and informal occasions (see Form for more details). Future Research Priorities Our findings has present application and points to future research; it allows attention to learning environments and forms of assessment. Principles of composition between linearity and modularity need to be understood, as do processes of reading and knowledge construction. The framework promises clarity for designers and users of learning materials. It can be applied to other subject areas, levels of education, and cultural contexts, to

• study variation in design, teaching and learning;

• evaluate the use of textbooks and electronic learning resources.


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The project focused on textbook design. This could be investigated further using ethnographic approaches. Interviewing and observing those involved in the practice of textbook production would give insight e.g., into collaboration between authors and graphic designers and its impact on design. Our informal interviews with publishers suggested for instance that usually very little interaction takes place between the various people involved in making a textbook. Graphic designers rarely meet the authors and illustrators of the texts which they lay out on the page. Ethnographic approaches can also be adopted to investigate how textbooks and electronic learning resources are used in educational practice, focusing on changes in representation as they are brought into action. This issue has been taken up in an ESRC bid on technology and change in the English classroom, recently submitted by Dr C. Jewitt.

Documents

end of project report final - · PDF filerepresentations of the digestive system and of ... attending to page format and grid, number of ... type of standard notation one would find