ZDM Mathematics Education (2013) 45:713–723
DOI 10.1007/s11858-013-0514-6
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Studying textbooks in an information age—a United States
perspective
Zalman Usiskin
Accepted: 29 May 2013 / Published online: 11 June 2013
Ó FIZ Karlsruhe 2013
Abstract This paper discusses issues centered around
three topics related to studying textbooks in an information
age. First considered are the multiple roles of textbooks,
from a source of content and questions to a vehicle for
changing the curriculum. Second are some of the lessons
we have learned from studies comparing student perfor-
mance with different textbooks within the United States,
including the recognition that a common test given to
students using two different curricula cannot cover the
differences between the curricula and still be fair to all the
students. Third is the consideration of textbooks as a
delivery system and their comparison with electronic
delivery of curriculum, including a discussion of the overt
nature of textbooks as compared to the covert nature of
electronic systems. We distinguish this use of electronic
devices from the use of computers and calculators to do
mathematics. Finally, predictions are given regarding the
future of textbooks in an age of electronic delivery sys-
tems. The perspective of this paper is from the United
States and based on the author’s four decades of experience
directing studies of instruction and student performance
with different mathematics textbooks.
Keywords Mathematics
Textbooks
Curriculum

Instruction
This paper is derived from a talk ‘‘Comparison Studies of Textbooks
in an Information Age’’ given at the International Conference on
School Mathematics Textbooks at East China Normal University,
Shanghai, 12 October 2011.
Z. Usiskin (&)
The University of Chicago, C.S. Mott Building, Room 309,
1225 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
e-mail: z-usiskin@uchicago.edu
In this paper, curriculum is the manifestation of the scope,
sequence, and/or timing of the teaching and learning of
content in an organized setting. The settings are usually
schools, but for years have included the home, museums,
and television, and more recently, hand-held electronic
devices and computers.
Those who study the mathematics curriculum have
distinguished several types of curriculum. For instance,
TIMSS has investigated three levels of curriculum: the
intended curriculum that governmental or education
agencies wish students to learn; the implemented curricu-
lum that is actually taught in the classroom or other loca-
tion; and the achieved curriculum, what students have
learned (Mullis et al. 2009).
In this paper, textbooks are written materials in printed
form designed to help in implementing the intended cur-
riculum. In the last part of this paper, textbooks delivered
in paper books are distinguished from curricula (sometimes
identical in content to a paper textbook) delivered elec-
tronically on a Kindle, iPad, Nook, personal computer, or
other device. The perspective is from the United States and
is based on the author’s four decades of experience
directing studies of instruction and student performance in
which different mathematics textbooks are the independent
variable.
1 The purposes of textbooks
1.1 A vehicle for change in the curriculum
In many countries, the details of the mathematics curricu-
lum that students encounter can be traced back to docu-
ments describing the intended curriculum emanating from
the ministry of education or other governmental body.
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There might be significant change in the intended curric-
ulum dictated by the ministry and/or encouraged by pro-
fessional organizations or formal commissions.
However, in the United States, the choice of what con-
tent is taught in schools is left to the individual fifty states,
and almost all states have periodically created documents
describing what should be taught at all levels from grade 1
through 12. Because in most classrooms, the mathematics
taught at all grade levels is based on what is in textbooks
used in the classroom, in most places, significant change in
the classroom has not typically occurred until the mani-
festation of that change is in textbooks.
Because of the importance of textbooks, twenty-two
states—mostly in the southern and western parts of the
country—have for many decades had a very strong central-
ized system in which textbooks have to go through a pro-
cess—sometimes a long process—in order to be approved. In
these states, for a given course, there is a list of approved
textbooks and each school district can purchase those books
with state funds. In the other twenty-eight states the textbook
has carried the same importance in the classroom, but the
process for approval of a textbook requires little if any
approval by a statewide committee. In those states, textbooks
have only to satisfy general criteria of suitability for a course
to be purchased with state funds by local school districts,
which may be as small as one school or as large as a county or
good-sized city containing hundreds of schools.
The reliance of teachers of mathematics on their text-
book means that textbooks have provided in the United
States one of the most direct ways in which the curriculum
can be changed. For instance, in the United States though
first work on the ‘‘new math’’, a movement in which great
emphasis was placed on mathematical structure and precise
language from the early elementary grades through 12th
grade, began in 1951 with the work of the University of
Illinois Committee on School Mathematics (UICSM)
(Walmsley 2003), the widespread adoption of those ideas
did not occur until the year 1960 when the textbooks cre-
ated by the School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG)
appeared. Similarly, in Great Britain, much of the change
in that era was caused by the existence and use of the
textbooks of the School Mathematics Project (SMP).
Throughout the 1960s other textbooks written for
classrooms in the United States incorporated many if not
most of the developments found in the new math textbooks,
including—for the first time—geometry in the early ele-
mentary grades, algebra in grades 7 and 8, analytic
geometry in the high school, and functions as a unifying
concept (Usiskin 1985). Likewise, a pushback from the
new math was discussed in the late 1960s, but the ideas
were not actuated until 1975 when there appeared school
textbooks with essentially no mathematical development at
all—purely skill and drill.
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Fourteen years later, the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics published its landmark document Curriculum
and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM
1989), but again it was not this document that caused
change, but the appearance of textbooks manifesting those
ideas that enabled change to occur. Perhaps believing this to
be the case, the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the
United States funded thirteen large projects through the
1990s to develop textbook materials that would move
the taught curriculum in the direction of the NCTM Stan-
dards. Today in grades K-8 in the United States, two of the
most used textbook series in the country are from those NSF
projects, Everyday Mathematics in grades K-5 and the
Connected Mathematics Project in grades 6-8.
This history merely substantiates the obvious, namely
that to influence the implemented curriculum, there must
be materials to implement. What is not so obvious is that
textbook research preceded each of these movements.
Above we noted that in the case of the new math, the
research of UICSM started years before SMSG (Walmsley
2003). In the case of the NCTM Standards, there existed
the materials of the University of Chicago School Mathe-
matics Project (UCSMP) (Usiskin 2003). In each era,
existence of textbooks that had already demonstrated some
promise made it possible for new ideas to be promoted with
some confidence.
The use of textbooks as a vehicle for change has led to
research in comparing textbooks at two stages of devel-
opment. At the early curriculum development stage, a
textbook incorporating a significant new idea or new ideas
is compared to existing books to test out its ideas. At the
post-publication stage, a later version of the new textbook
is tested against existing books.
My own research, spanning over four decades, has been
to administer, direct or help plan studies at the early cur-
riculum development stage, testing materials at the sec-
ondary (grades 6–12) level. These materials have differed
from the standard curricula of their time in a variety of
ways: the development of geometry through transforma-
tions (Usiskin 1969, 1972); the application of ideas from
group theory in the learning of advanced algebra at the high
school level (Usiskin & Bernhold 1973); the development
of elementary algebra using real-world applications
(Swafford & Kepner 1980); the integration of statistics into
the algebra and pre-calculus curricula; the insertion of a
significant amount of discrete mathematics (Thompson
1992), the application of a multi-dimensional conception of
what it means to understand mathematics (Hirschhorn et al.
1995); and the use of the latest calculator and computer
technologies to do mathematics (Thompson & Senk 2001).
Most recently, the research involves testing materials in
which students are using computer algebra systems in their
study of algebra from grade 8 on.
Studying textbooks in an information age
In all this research, students have been expected to use
their classroom experiences and their textbook as their
main vehicles for learning mathematics. Although the
textbook has always been accompanied by extra materials
for practice and for enrichment, we have expected the
teachers using our materials to base their teaching on the
textbook, and our teachers’ editions and other materials
have always been subordinate to the book.
The recent strides in personal hand-held computing
devices bring into question the textbook as the main
resource for delivery of the mathematics. Consequently this
paper is not only about what we have learned from our
comparative textbook research but also about the impli-
cations of this work in a world where students can easily go
well beyond the textbook for explanations and problems
and where some have said that the textbook is obsolete.
1.2 Exposition of mathematics content
In the west, the textbook tradition began about 2,300 years
ago with Euclid’s Elements (Heath, 1956), which until
recent times defined the experience of those who studied
geometry. Euclid’s Elements is a logical exposition of
geometry and number theory, derived from 5 common
notions, 5 postulates, and definitions that precede each of
its 13 sections. It consists of 176 propositions dealing with
plane geometry, 217 on number theory, and 75 on solid
geometry. It contains no problems and no applications
outside of mathematics.
Likewise, a seminal text for the study of algebra was
Leonard Euler’s Vollständige Anleitung zur Algebra,
written around 1765. The German title literally translates
into English as Complete Instruction on Algebra, but was
translated by Hewlett in 1822 from the French translation
of Jean Bernoulli as Elements of Algebra (Euler, 1985).
The importance of this work, clearly meant as a textbook,
can be seen in its influence on the written language of
algebra. Euler either introduced or popularized much of the
language used in algebra and analysis today, including the
symbols p and e for those numbers and i for H-1, and
P
f(x) and -notation.
1.3 Presentation of problems (with
or without solutions)
In eastern Asia, specifically China, the textbook tradition
also began long ago, with the Jiuzhang suanshu, Nine
Chapters on the Mathematical Art (Shen, Crossley, &
Wun, 1999; Swetz, 1979). The Nine Chapters is quite
different from the works of Euclid and Euler in both style
and content, consisting solely of 246 problems and
their solutions. Its content is highly computational and
applied, with problems involving surveying, agriculture,
715
proportions, engineering, taxation, calculation, the solution
of equations, and the properties of right triangles. It con-
tains no logical development within a mathematical
system.
Today’s schoolbooks tend to combine these two oppo-
site traditions. Most include both theory and cover a wide
range of content so that a teacher can use the book as a
resource for explaining the concepts contained within.
Most books also include problems for students to solve in
order to delve into the mathematical ideas and also to
prepare for examinations. But books are not alike in style,
even when written for students of the same age and
ostensibly covering the same mathematics. Some books
contain a deductive or quasi-deductive development of the
theory; some do not. Some motivate their content with real-
world situations; others have few applications. Some
incorporate the technology of calculators, spreadsheets,
computer algebra systems, geometry drawing programs,
and statistical software into the theory and problems; others
ignore technology completely.
Some textbooks have other features. They may include
group activities, ideas for extended student projects, sam-
ple tests, glossaries, tables (though not the extensive tables
found in books before the existence of hand-held calcula-
tors), and so on.
1.4 The centerpiece of a course (which may have other
pieces)
Textbooks provide a scope and sequence from which
instruction can be planned and which can provide a student
with a picture of what learning is expected. They are often
the centerpiece of a course. In countries with national
curricula, textbooks cover essentially the same mathemat-
ics. In the United States, the situation has been far more
complex. We have noted above that in 28 states, public
schools may adopt virtually any textbooks they wish. In the
other 22 states, statewide committees create a list of text-
books from which schools can choose. In all the states,
non-public schools, which enroll about 11 % of the US
school population, can use whatever books they wish. As a
result, books can differ significantly in content. For
instance, in the same course at the same grade level, stu-
dents in one school may not see any study of statistics in
their books, while students in a school using a different
textbook might have a significant exposure to statistical
ideas.
Other differences among books are subtler and more
related to how we believe students learn mathematics best.
Should the teaching of decimals precede, follow, or pro-
ceed simultaneously with the teaching of fractions? Should
long division still be taught or be replaced by the use of a
calculator? Should congruence in geometry be approached
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through transformations? When should students be intro-
duced to the f(x) notation for functions? Is it more effective
to start a lesson with a rich problem or application or to end
the lesson that way? In creating curriculum, there are an
endless number of such questions.
Together, the materials encountered by a student in
school constitute his or her textbook curriculum. In most
places, the textbook curriculum is very close to the
implemented (or taught) curriculum. The textbook and
taught curricula are often viewed as so similar that text-
books are often used as a proxy for what is taught in a
classroom. For instance, the performance of the United
States on international tests has been attributed to a
mathematics curriculum that is ‘‘a mile wide and an inch
deep’’ (Schmidt, McKnight, & Raizen 1997) and as evi-
dence is given the fact that textbooks in the United States
have more pages and are bigger than textbooks in other
countries. However, our research at the middle and high
school levels indicates that teachers do not teach the entire
book (Thompson, Senk, & Yu 2011); rather they sit on
topics they believe are important for longer periods of time
than we recommend, so in fact our research suggests that
the taught curriculum in the United States is often neither
wide nor deep. Furthermore, our data and the data of others
indicate that there is wide variation in the performance of
classrooms throughout in the United States, from the
affluent suburbs around large cities and the many univer-
sity towns or high-tech communities, where performance is
as high as any in the world (Hawkes, Kimmelman, &
Kroeze 1997; Dunne 2000) to other areas where perfor-
mance is more like that of the lowest-scoring places in the
world, even though students in these places may use the
same textbooks.
1.5 The transmission of an ideal curriculum
Regardless of country, this discussion points out a major
purpose of textbooks in today’s world, the transmission of
an ideal curriculum. This purpose underlies the major
question in mathematics education in the United States
today, whether the institution of a national curriculum,
guidelines for textbooks to meet that curriculum, and
associated high-stakes tests will improve student learning
(see Sect. 2.5 below).
1.6 The definition of ‘‘algebra’’, ‘‘geometry’’,
‘‘calculus’’, etc., in people’s minds
The five aforementioned purposes of mathematics text-
books might be viewed, with suitable changes of wording,
as purposes of textbooks in any subject. But, unlike all
other school subjects, the textbook in mathematics has
often defined the subject. There is an area of mathematics
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called algebra, and some mathematicians are algebraists,
but to the general public in the United States algebra is
what was in their algebra textbook. Likewise, geometry to
the public is what geometry is or was in their textbooks.
This is not true of history, nor of literature, nor of for-
eign language, nor of biology or chemistry or physics. In
all those subjects, people realize that the textbook displays
only a small piece of the subject. But in mathematics there
is this view of students that everything important is put in
their textbooks. Below I return to a difference between
mathematics textbooks and textbooks in other subjects,
because I believe these differences are significant and tend
not to be taken into consideration by education policy
makers.
1.7 A vehicle for learning mathematics
All of the purposes I have mentioned are subordinate to an
overriding purpose of today’s schoolbooks. That is, by
providing explanations of concepts and supplying problems
for student solution, textbooks are a vehicle for learning
mathematics. The only other vehicle of comparable
importance is the teacher.
2 Lessons learned from comparison studies
of textbooks
Comparison studies of textbooks can tell a great deal about
how a textbook is used and what students learn. These are
the typical goals of such studies. We have learned much
about our curricula and the curricula of others from our
comparison studies (Senk & Thompson 2003). The focus
here is on those aspects that could be viewed as transfer-
able to curricula in other countries and applicable to a wide
variety of levels of schooling.
2.1 A good textbook is not a panacea
When I began writing mathematics textbooks 45 years ago,
I thought that good textbooks could solve any difficulties
students had in the learning of mathematics. If the math-
ematics was explained clearly and there were good prob-
lems, and the teacher covered the material, what could go
wrong? That was quite a naı̈ve view. Even ignoring the
teacher variable, two factors impede the effects of text-
books. First, the combination of prior knowledge and stu-
dent desire to spend time on task, independent of whatever
part native intelligence plays in learning, is very wide in
students, and no textbook can possibly be appropriate for
the entire range. Second, in poor communities, children
often have to work or take care of younger or older family
in the home and cannot devote the necessary time to their
Studying textbooks in an information age
learning. Furthermore, if these children get behind, the
family cannot afford the tutoring that might enable the
child to catch up.
Thus the textbook curriculum may determine most of
the experiences a student undergoes in the classroom, but it
is not necessarily a determiner of the achieved (or learned)
curriculum. And so, in theory, the educational system is
supposed to work this way: There is a hierarchy with an
ideal or intended curriculum at the top, set by ministries,
school districts, or schools. Immediately below is the
textbook or materials curriculum—that is, textbooks,
workbooks, and teaching aids, which mirrors the ideal
curriculum. The taught or implemented curriculum follows
and is immediately below the materials curriculum.
Finally, at the bottom, the learned curriculum is as large a
subset of the taught curriculum as we can get.
However, in practice, things do not work that way. Each
curriculum overlaps the curriculum above it in the hierarchy
but tends to miss some of it and may contain many things
not above it. For instance, we have in the current UCSMP
geometry text a lesson titled ‘‘Transformations and Music’’
(Benson et al. 2009). We do not know of any place with an
ideal curriculum containing this content. But we listened to
teachers who had spent a day on this topic and they told us
that for many students it was the highlight of the year. So we
added this lesson to our book, and we have other lessons for
the same reason—to give students more reasons to enjoy
and appreciate mathematics. We also have lessons on sta-
tistics and discrete mathematics and a variety of applica-
tions, and we use the latest hand-held technology, including
computer algebra systems and some dynamic geometry. It
is natural to want to know whether lessons like these have
any effect, and whether any one textbook is more effective
in the teaching of students than another.
2.2 The textbook curriculum is not the taught
curriculum
Most textbooks recognize that schools, teachers, and stu-
dents differ in their expectations of students. We want
classes using our materials to cover about 85 % of the
lessons, including virtually all the lessons from the first two-
thirds of the book. We expect that classes with very fine
students will complete the entire book; for other classes we
suggest lessons and sets of lessons that can be skipped. We
sequence lessons carefully and expect that, even if lessons
are skipped, the order of the textbook is followed.
However, regardless of how much guidance we give
teachers, regardless of what teachers are told about the
importance of going through a book in order, our recom-
mendations are not always followed. Our experience is
common among those who wish to use textbooks to change
mathematics instruction and has led to the concept of
717
fidelity of implementation, the attempt to describe or
measure the extent to which the curriculum developer’s
intent is represented in what happens in the classroom.
Some of those who study fidelity of implementation are
concerned mainly with the extent to which the material in
the textbook matches the taught content, but others are
concerned also with the extent to which the underlying
philosophy of the materials is represented in the classroom
discourse and activities. The reason for concern about
fidelity is obvious: if the teacher did not teach the material,
and so the students do not have opportunity to learn the
material, then any lack of learning should not be blamed on
the textbook, because the textbook was not given a chance.
Yet this reasoning is too simple. It neglects the possi-
bility that the teacher looked at the material in the textbook
and did not teach it because the teacher felt it was not
appropriate for the students. It also neglects a major reason
for studies of textbooks, namely, to predict what would
happen in classrooms that used the book. Perhaps this
teacher is a good barometer of what would happen, and by
not teaching certain lessons, or teaching them outside the
spirit of the books, the teacher is saying that the book needs
to be revised. Perhaps the teachers need to be educated in
the new content before they feel confident enough to teach
it. Perhaps the materials need to be rewritten or even
rethought. Perhaps the educational environment is not
hospitable for the materials at this time. The biggest reason
teachers tell us for not teaching some of a book is that they
felt the content would not be on a major test on which the
students would have to succeed.
This presents a dilemma. If a difficulty arises in the
implementation of the material in a textbook, is it due to
the teacher, to the book, or to the educational environment,
including perhaps dictates from the school system or from
the education ministry? The word ‘‘fidelity’’ is quite fitting
in studying this dilemma, for consider a recording of
orchestral music that you hear. The term ‘‘high fidelity’’
means that a recording sounds very close to the actual live
performance of the music. Now suppose a recording does
not sound good. Is it because the live performance was
lousy, because the recording is of poor quality, or because
your technology to play the recording is not good. Is the
teacher’s performance faithful to the text? Is the orchestra’s
performance faithful to the composer’s music? A lousy
performance by teacher or orchestra can cause you to feel
that the original was not a particularly good piece of work.
2.3 If a common test is given to students using two
different curricula, it cannot cover the differences
between the curricula and still be fair to all students
Those of us who are trying to revamp the curriculum face
an additional problem. We do what we do because we
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believe the existing goals for students are not what they
should be. We may think that some current goals are
obsolete or set for the wrong grade level or for the wrong
students. We may think that other goals need to be met by
students, perhaps content goals in fields such as statistics,
or in the use of technology that does mathematics such as
calculators and certain software, or in process goals such as
appreciating the value of mathematics in one’s life or
working in groups.
This presents another dilemma. How does one compare
two curricula—say, two textbooks—that do not have
identical goals? Consider two curricula A and B that are
80 % in agreement. That is, 20 % of curriculum A is not in
curriculum B, and 20 % of curriculum B is not in curricu-
lum A. Another way of putting this is that if a school year is
40 weeks long, the two curricula have 32 weeks in com-
mon. The situation can be pictured with a Venn diagram.
A Perhaps this was a reasonable distribution for some
80% 20%
B time constituted only about 6 % of the age cohort (now they
20%
If a test or battery of tests covers the union of curricu-
lums A and B, then only 2/3 of the test will consist of items
familiar to all students. If the test covers only the inter-
section of the two curricula, then 1/5 of each course will
not be tested and, although all of the test will be familiar to
the students, exactly the material that would most differ-
entiate the curricula and likely most differentiate the stu-
dents will not be tested!
This would be a minor problem if the flaps in the above
Venn diagram were small compared to the intersection of
the rectangles, but large curricular projects typically exist
because of a perception that we need major change in the
curriculum, for examples, (1) a curriculum in which paper-
and-pencil competence is not expected on anything more
than the simplest arithmetic and algebra, and calculators
and computer algebra systems are always available; or (2) a
curriculum in which probability, statistics, and mathemat-
ical modeling are given equal footing with algebra and
geometry.
The UCSMP solution historically to this problem has
been to give two types of tests: one type test essentially over
the common content and a second type of test only to the
new curriculum. Our goal has been that our students per-
form at least as well on the first test—the common content
as the comparison sample, and on the second test that they
perform at a level comparable to that of the first test (though
what is ‘‘comparable’’ is a matter of judgment). We have
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Z. Usiskin
almost always succeeded in this goal even in our first try-
outs, and when we do not reach this goal, we modify the
materials before publication so that we increase the prob-
ability that the published materials will reach our goals. So,
for instance, we have found that the use of our textbooks,
which ‘‘require’’ the use of scientific calculators in the
middle school and graphing calculators and computer
algebra systems in the high school to do complicated
arithmetic and algebra alongside paper-and-pencil tech-
niques to do the simpler manipulations, does not result in
lower performance on those paper-and-pencil skills. Fur-
thermore, the use of this technology makes it possible for us
to consider questions and for students to explore situations
that would traditionally be out of reach in these courses.
The problem of comparing curricula is heightened when
there are more than two curricula to be compared. For
example, consider the distribution of items on the test
given to 12th-graders in the Third International Mathe-
matics and Science Study of 1995–1996 (Table 1).
countries. But the US sample included many more students
than our advanced placement calculus students, who at the
constitute about double that). Most of the US sample had
never had one day of calculus. The curriculum of most of the
advanced US students was about 65 % numbers and equa-
tions (including functions), 0 % calculus, 25 % geometry,
5 % probability and statistics, and 5 % validation. One
could say that TIMSS tested one curriculum on students who
for the most part had studied another curriculum.
2.4 Even classes with the same teacher using the same
textbook may differ significantly in performance
The studies under my direction have involved matched
classes in 6–20 schools. It is invariably the case that our
materials fare better in some schools than others, often in
some classes more than others even with the same teacher.
As might be expected, we get the best performance from
Table 1 Distribution of advanced mathematics items by content
category, from the Third International Mathematics and Science
Study (taken from Mullis et al., 1998, p. B-9, Table B-2)
Category % of itemsa No. of points
Numbers and equations 26 22
Calculus 23 19
Geometry 35 29
Probability and statistics 11 8
Validation and structure 5 4
Totals 100 82
a
There were a total of 65 items
Studying textbooks in an information age
classes in which the teacher is enthusiastic about our
materials. In these cases, we do not know whether it is our
materials that cause the higher performance, or whether the
better performance is a result of the enthusiasm with which
the teacher teaches.
In contrast, we have generally found that the worst
performing classes are those in which the teacher is trying
to teach the ‘‘former’’ curriculum while using our books.
When the textbook does not agree with what the teacher is
teaching, students are unable to use it for guidance and,
even if the teacher does not outwardly display frustration,
students are aware of the mismatch and become frustrated
themselves.
2.5 Teachers in the United States tend to cover
an entire text only with their best classes
The last of the things that we have learned may be unique
to the United States, but I include it because an opposite
view may have been engendered from studies of the United
States performance on international tests.
US textbooks are big and they are long. A typical book
for 3rd grade in the primary school may have well over 700
pages. Books at the secondary school level are longer and
may have well over 1,000 pages. At the secondary school
level, teachers tend to cover about 75–80 % of a book. I
cannot speak about what happens at the primary school
level, but my feeling is that more of the typical book is
covered, but not all of it. In particular, at grades K-5,
geometry and other topics that are not arithmetic are most
likely to be skipped.
Why would a teacher not cover the entire text? Perhaps
the text is too long. This is the case for most mathematics
textbooks at the secondary school level in the United
States. It is also the case for most science textbooks and
most history books. The main reasons for the great length
of textbooks in all these subjects is that the various states
and school districts do not have identical syllabi for the
same subject, and teachers express preferences for certain
content beyond the published syllabi. The minimal-cost
response of publishers to the situation is to include all
content likely to be desired in a significant number of
schools.
Another reason for not covering the entire text is that the
teacher may feel that some content is not important. This is
more likely in the United States or any other country that
does not have high-stakes tests in a given year. So, even
when there is time to finish the textbook, a teacher may
decide to skip some content. We have seen teachers in our
studies skip the 2nd or 3rd lesson in the very first chapter of
the book, a lesson designed to help set up the entire year’s
work, because that lesson is unfamiliar and, as a result, the
teacher views it as unimportant.
719
Ensuring that all students receive the mathematics they
need is the main impetus behind the current movement to
create a single ideal mathematics curriculum for the entire
United States, to dictate many aspects of how that curric-
ulum should be taught, and to ensure that the same content
is taught by requiring students to take tests every school
year beginning at grade 3 (Common Core State Standards
Initiative, 2010). The hope in this movement is that all
textbooks in the United States for a given course will cover
the same material (Common Core State Standards Initiative
2013a, b).
For a number of reasons, I have been a critic of this
movement. First, people in our profession disagree strongly
on what is the most appropriate mathematics for today’s
students (Garfunkel & Mumford, 2011). Second, all stu-
dents are not alike, and to assume that they have the same
needs is unrealistic. Third, in the workplace it is important
to have people who have different backgrounds and dif-
ferent views of problems and their solutions. Fourth, by
taking decision-making away from teachers, the creativity
of teachers is stifled, and if students do not see creative
teachers, then their creativity, too, is stifled. Fifth, the
movement towards a common curriculum applies univer-
sally only to public schools. Private schools in many states
do not have to comply. The willingness to exclude these
schools is in my mind an admission that a common cur-
riculum will not get the best performance out of students.
And sixth, experimenting with the curriculum will become
extraordinarily difficult if not impossible because schools
naturally will not want to depart from a curriculum on
which their students are being tested each year. Thus, in an
era in which technology is so quickly changing what we
need to learn, we are instituting a process that makes the
curriculum very difficult to change.
3 The textbook as a delivery system
Thus far this analysis of textbooks has viewed the textbook
as a curriculum. A second aspect of textbooks brings us up
the question of the future of textbooks. In all of the pur-
poses mentioned above, the textbook is a delivery system.
But bookstores, after seeing enormous growth in the past
50 years, are now closing in large numbers, unable to
compete with the combination of on-line sales and elec-
tronic books. What is the future of paper textbooks in such
an environment? Is this good or bad for the learning of
mathematics and how can we tell?
3.1 The rise of electronic delivery systems
This is the concept that is being brought into question by
laptop computers, iPads, electronic readers, and other
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devices that can display curriculum and also can be inter-
active. We are asked by schools whether our textbook
materials are available on one or more of these devices, and
every major publisher in the United States is trying to
create materials that are electronic-based rather than paper-
based and that obviate the need for a textbook.
A major advantage touted for electronic-based materials
is that they can be interactive. In the best of these materials,
students can dynamically work with figures and expres-
sions, changing them and viewing what results. Students
can be given questions, and the computer can adapt later
questions based on the responses to earlier questions. In
this way, the learning experience can be tailored to what a
student already knows and does not know. There can be
games and activities to motivate students and students can
learn at their own pace.
These rationales are quite similar to the rationales given
in the 1970s for individualized instruction. The problem
with individualized instruction at that time was that unless
a student was unusually self-motivated, being on his own to
learn mathematics without a teacher was exciting only for a
short time. Teachers had great difficulty trying to keep
track of where their students were and found it virtually
impossible to teach a class when students were at so many
different places in their learning of the idea the teacher
wanted to discuss.
As a consequence, the move towards individualizing
instruction died. Today, however, the idea is being revised.
If a student is being taught a lesson by computer, the
computer can keep track of what the student has done, it
can use student responses to adjust the questions and
activities it offers the student, and it can send the student to
sites where there are explanations of the topic given by a
knowledgeable person. With appropriate software, students
can talk to each other and talk to a teacher and even engage
in group discussions. Everything that is available in a
classroom is available on computer except for human
contact.
It would seem that there is no way the textbook will
survive in this climate. In fact, without waiting for
research, already in some places textbooks have been
replaced by laptops or other electronic delivery devices.
3.2 Technology for delivering mathematics vs.
technology for doing mathematics
However, we cannot simply assume that newer technology
will replace older technology in the teaching of mathe-
matics. I thought that when scientific calculators appeared
40 years ago, paper-and-pencil calculations would tend to
become obsolete. While this has been the case outside of
schools, in business and other activities, in school there has
been very little influence of calculators on the selection of
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Z. Usiskin
paper-and-pencil tasks for students to master. Similarly,
dynamic geometry software and hand-held computer
algebra systems have existed for a couple of decades and
they too have had little effect on the mathematics curricula
in most countries. It is bizarre that in some places computer
software is employed to teach algorithms such as long
division that calculators have made obsolete. Even in the
United States, where the current president has stressed the
need for students to be technologically literate, the recent
move towards a national curriculum has created an ideal
curriculum in which not one algebra skill in the curriculum
50 years ago has been taken out. So, although it is clear
that there will inevitably be increased use of electronic
textbooks and computers, it is not clear whether that will
influence at all what students are expected to learn. Nor do
we have much evidence that students learn more when
taught from these newer technologies. So we must distin-
guish between the use of electronic media to deliver the
mathematics from the use of computers and calculators to
do mathematics.
3.3 Comparing electronic to paper-based delivery
systems
In this climate, it is natural to want to compare a classroom
in which the curriculum is based on a paper-based textbook
with a classroom in which the materials are in electronic
form and a student is working primarily with a computer.
Perhaps the simplest use of a computer as a delivery
system for learning is when the student has an electronic
reader, perhaps a Kindle or an iPad or a laptop, and the
pages are the same as in a paper textbook except that they
are displayed electronically. Such electronic readers have
an obvious advantage. A student does not have to carry
many textbooks; a reader can easily store hundreds of
books and in so doing can be more efficient and far less
expensive than a bound book. This practice also is envi-
ronmentally attractive, for it saves paper, which saves trees.
But from the standpoint of curriculum, if the electronic
reader merely displays the textbook, then I believe that, as
with virtually every other innovation in the delivery sys-
tem, when the student first encounters the new delivery
system, the novelty will create more interest and more
learning, but in the long run the two delivery systems will
not lead to significantly different results.
So let us imagine an experiment where the best of the
textbook and electronic worlds are pitted against one
another. Group N (for newer technology) has electronic
textbooks. There may be televised lessons given by expert
teachers. The lessons are interactive in that the computer
responses depend on student inputs and answers to ques-
tions. These responses include remediation or more chal-
lenge, as necessary. At given times students can speak with
Studying textbooks in an information age
each other and converse with a teacher via Skype or some
other network.
Group O (for older technology) has traditional textbooks
in a classroom with a teacher. The teacher has the usual
supplements that come with textbooks: extra sheets for
practice; extra sheets for enrichments; extra activities,
often with concrete objects or with technology; a solution
manual; and, in today’s environment, the ability to project
any of these on a screen for class discussion.
I think that Group O will tend to outperform Group N.
However, which group tends to learn more may not matter.
Policy decisions regarding whether to use electronic means
or traditional textbooks to deliver mathematics are often
not based on research with learners but on three other
considerations: public opinion peer pressure; economics;
and transparency.
Public opinion peer pressure causes schools or school
systems or even countries to move towards electronic
media delivery of material because those in charge want to
be in the latest fashion, not necessarily because it is more
effective. Regarding economics, both textbooks and elec-
tronic delivery systems cost money—but the funds may
come from different sources or from different line items in
a budget. Some costs may be easier to determine than
others. Just as textbooks get replaced by newer editions or
newer books, when will today’s technology become
incompatible with the next generation? In both, generations
tend to be 5–10 years long.
3.4 ‘‘Transparency’’ (‘‘overtness’’) vs. ‘‘opacity’’
(‘‘covertness’’)
In the context of curriculum, ‘‘transparency’’ refers to the
extent to which someone not in the classroom can deter-
mine what is in the materials. The issue of transparency is
an interesting one in the United States, where there is a
good amount of local control over what is taught. That is, at
all levels from kindergarten through grade 12, an individual
school district in a state can decide how students should be
grouped and what should be taught to each group. These
decisions are made by local school boards or by the local
teachers and administrators.
A textbook is transparent. The content to which students
might officially be exposed can be seen on its pages or on
the pages of ancillary paper materials. The materials are
tangible; a committee can touch these materials and easily
examine them before deciding whether the school should
purchase them.
In contrast, electronic delivery systems are not trans-
parent. They are opaque. The possible interactions of a
student with a computer are so many that it is unrealistic
for someone to explore them all. Furthermore, the more
sophisticated the system, the more interactions that are
721
built in with people from other schools or with links to
particular internet sites, the more difficult it is to keep track
of what a student might encounter.
Compounding the difficulty of keeping track of a cur-
riculum on computer is the fact that a material on a website
can be changed without the user knowing it, and once the
change is made, the old version is lost. In contrast, one can
always compare various editions of a textbook.
All these suggest that a curriculum, when delivered in
paper form, is overt, whereas a sophisticated curriculum
delivered on computer is covert.
The transparency of mathematical work is one of the
main reasons why some people do not trust students to
work with calculators or computers to do mathematics. For
instance, when the four-color problem was solved in 1976,
computers were employed to help in a proof that the con-
tiguous regions on every map on a plane or sphere could be
distinguished using no more than four colors. It was a
landmark proof of one of the most famous unsolved
problems in mathematics. However, there were many
mathematicians who did not accept this proof because
some of the approximately 500 types of maps that needed
to be considered were dealt with by a computer working
with a computer program. Some mathematicians still do
not accept such proofs (Murray 2006). Transparency has
historically been a major issue in determining both the
validity of proofs and whether students understand math-
ematics. Many people in mathematics are less bothered by
a student who makes a mistake in a paper-and-pencil
computation than by a student who types in the wrong
numbers into a calculator and consequently gets the wrong
answer.
Transparency is also an issue for the general public. It is
behind regulations that limit what children can access on
the internet. It is related to the desire to limit social media
interactions in school, such as the use of Facebook or
Twitter.
Transparency is also a major issue for researchers in the
learning of mathematics. It is difficult enough to determine
what a student is thinking in response to a question, but
when you cannot fix the questions asked of a student, the
research becomes more difficult. Measuring the fidelity of
implementation of an electronically-delivered curriculum
is difficult because the curriculum is not transparent. Even
though it is relatively easy to document the various screens
a student views in learning mathematics from an electronic
platform, it would seem to be very difficult to put all the
data together, and even more difficult to compare what
treatment the student actually encountered with what
treatment the student could have had. A textbook provides
a limited source of exercises and explanations. The
boundedness of a textbook is a weakness compared to
some electronic platforms, but it is a strength to anyone
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722
who wishes to study what experiences a child can have
with a curriculum, or what a teacher’s role could be in
explaining the mathematics. And, perhaps, most signifi-
cantly, the boundedness makes it easier to control the
curriculum.
3.5 Some predictions
Earlier in this paper I admitted being wrong in my pre-
diction that calculators would quickly become common-
place in elementary mathematics classrooms. So any
predictions made here should be viewed as guesses.
The printed textbook will not die. In recent years, a
number of people have predicted that textbooks will
become obsolete (e.g., Lewin 2009; Hill 2010) and the US
Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently
called for the nation to move as fast as possible away from
printed textbooks and toward digital ones (Duncan 2012).
Because of the need for transparency, the need for teachers,
students, and the general public to be able to ascertain
quickly what is being taught, the textbook will remain in
classrooms.
Electronic media will coexist with textbooks. Today we
produce documents on our computers and can send them
all over the world electronically, but we also print many of
these documents. We have had electronic journals for a
while, but we also still have paper journals. We use cal-
culators and computers to do mathematics, but we also use
paper and pencil. The use of textbooks may wane, but it
will not die. A mathematics course will be delivered to a
student by a combination of paper and electronic means,
but exactly what that combination will be is not clear. It is
notable that South Korea, after announcing in 2010 that it
would do away with paper textbooks, seems now to be
embracing traditional textbooks alongside electronic
delivery systems (Harlan 2012).
Electronic means for doing mathematics will increase
over time. As the use of electronic means to deliver
mathematics in the classroom increases, so will the use of
calculators and computers to do mathematics. This trend is
inevitable due to the need of more and more of the public
to be able to deal with numerical and visual data, but it is
likely to be independent of the delivery system.
Comparison studies of textbooks and electronic media
will be undertaken but decisions regarding their use will
tend to be made independently of the studies. The diffi-
culty of comparing curricula of any kind, compounded by
the difficulty of determining precisely what students
encounter in an electronic environment, will hamper most
comparative curriculum research of this kind. As a result,
decisions regarding how to proceed will be made more on
faith in one platform over another, rather than on hard
evidence.
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Z. Usiskin
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