The Visual Turn and the Transformation of the Textbook / Edition 1

by James A. LaSpina

Overview

Is the emerging digital multimedia culture of today transforming the textbook or forever displacing it? As new media of transmission enter the classroom, the traditional textbook is now caught up in a dialogue reshaping the textual boundaries of the book, and with it the traditional modes of cognition and learning, which are bound more to language than to visual form. Most of the important work in the past two decades in the field of curriculum has focused on the culture of the textbook. A rich literature has evolved around textbooks as the traditional object of instructional activity. This volume is an important contribution to this literature, which focuses on the actual making of a textbook. This design process serves as a metaphor that suggests new paradigms of learning and instruction, in which text content is but one component in a multidimensional information space.The Visual Turn is an exploration along the border of this new learning space transforming the traditional center of instruction in the classroom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805827026
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/01/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Figures and Tables vii

Acknowledgments xii

From Pre-face to Interface xiii

Introduction: Turning a Textbook Controversy on Its Head 1

1 Social Studies for the 21st Century 7

Ligature: The Binding of the Visual and the Verbal 8

Prototype Development and National Testing 13

The Influence of the California Market 15

The Thumbnail Process: Views of Designers, Editors, and Authors 16

Finessing at the Back End: Textbook Production and Computer-Based Design 22

2 When Image Meets Word 27

The Textbook and Standard Publishing Practice 28

Thinking Beyond the Book 29

How Images and Words Work Together 36

Words and Pictures Belong Together 54

At the Intersection of Image, Word, Number, Art 56

3 Making the Beautiful Book 57

The Comenius Continuum 58

SS21 Program Architecture: The Toolbox 64

From Architecture to Openers: Social Studies That You Can Step Into 72

Looking Down: I Know a Place of Planetary Space 85

Looking at Ourselves Looking Down 94

4 A Beautiful Book or Considerate Text 97

Instructional Design in the SS21 Program 98

The Postlinear Text 104

The Visual Pattern of Meaning and the Principles of Gestalt 108

On the Myth of Coherence and the Considerate Text 121

5 A Different Model of Reading 123

Formative Thinking in the Development of the Visual Learning Strand 125

Multiple Intelligences and Visual Learning 128

The DBAE Connection to Visual Learning 131

Discipline Concepts for DBAE 132

A Different Kind of Guided Instruction 134

On the Question of Assessment 144

6 History as Our Best Guess 155

A Contest of Identities: California Adoption Politik 158

At the Visual/Verbal Center of the Adoption Storm 161

What You See Is Not What You Get 177

7 A Window in the Text 183

WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get 187

On Paper or Screen: The Semiotics of Book Form 194

The Last Word: Reading Under Re-vision 201

8 Face-to-Face or Interface: Social Studies in Cyberspace 207

A Different Engine 209

VR/RL: Virtual Reality or Real Life 212

A Window Through… 214

Transmission in Transition 218

References 225

Appendix 1 235

Appendix 2 237

Author Index 241

Subject Index 245

Editorial Reviews

"...this is a thought-provoking book, and the questions it rises merit careful consideration and further research attention."
—British Journal of Educational Psychology

"The first book I know of that tries to show the transition from the modern to the postmodern textbook. The basic idea of going at how the computer is transforming the textbook and our modes of literacy is very interesting and important."
—Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr.
University of Miami

"...Interesting on several levels. The [Houghton Mifflin K-8 social studies textbook series] around which the author wraps his book has generated a good deal of drama....LaSpina recognizes these aspects of the text's publication and selection in California and the subsequent controversy, then shifts the reader's focus away from the politics of publication to the 'visual turn' of the text....A one-of-a-kind book..."
—Linda S. Levstik
University of Kentucky

From the Publisher