THE CYCLE OF TEXTBOOK ADAPTION

How is textbook adapted

The plan you have drawn up in the preceding investigation is only the first part in the cycle of adapting a textbook. This follows the same cycle as course development: planning how to teach with the text, reaching, (all the while adjusting as you plan and reach), Replanning based on evaluating the teaching and the text, reteaching with the text.

The work you have done to plan a unit in the investigations above provides a basis for further changes, once you have had a chance to teach with the textbook. In stage two, teaching the book, you may choose to ask your students to express their views of how effective the textbook and your adaptations of it are with respect to their needs and their learning. 

A teacher in Taiwan provided a good example of how the cycle worked for her, She came up to me after a presentation. I had given on using textbooks. She had a copy of one of the books I had co-authored. She riffled through the pages of the book, which were covered with little yellow "post it" notes on which she had written notes to herself. She said "Your book was hard to teach the first time, much easier to teach the second time." She showed me how the notes had helped her to make changes and adaptations; To return to the piano analogy, the first time she played the piece of music, it was new to her and not necessarily easy to play. With practice and familiarity; however, she could play it with more confidence and skill. Each time she went through the cycle of planning, teaching, replanning, and reteaching, she became more comfortable making choices about what to emphasize, what to leave out, and where to supplement and personalize the material. She was using the textbook as a resource for her students' learning. In terms of adapting the textbook to her particular students in her particular context, her yellow post-it notes and what they represented-reflecting and learning how to make the text work for her and her students had allowed her to become, in effect, a co-author of the book. 

Although the textbook was a constraint as far as allowing for student choice (or teacher choice for that matter) on what themes would be addressed in the class, I think that in the end I have been able to look at how to use a text as a sort of skeletal form which provides a certain amount of structure but which also allows for personal adaptation. I am excited to have broken through some of my former feelings of being bound to the textbook in its existing form, and I am looking forward to new opportunities to explore working with other texts.