There is an anti-textbook bias rising among educators. I am trying to understand why. I know that at the college level there is a great concern with cost. As I have argued elsewhere this argument typically accompanied by the tab for a sample semester is often misrepresented. What I mean by this is most students resell their books so the actual cost is 1/2 the tab that is reported. In the K-12 environment I am not certain just what the most common issue. Perhaps the problem is the structured nature of the content limiting the creativity of the teacher and/or the students. It is not my intention to argue against these positions beyond noting that the cost of textbooks is frequently overstated.
My interest here is in explaining what I think the value of a textbook could be. In other posts, I have argued that a textbook in contrast to individual resources providers learners a structure for the content presented. Learning is only partly about the ideas stored, but also about the organization of this content. The author or authors responsible for a text typically do more than just present a set of ideas but built these ideas into a meaningful structure.
After reading many of the popular books, not what I would consider textbooks, being discussed online by educators I propose one additional benefit of many textbooks. Textbook authors are not necessarily promoters of a given instructional strategy or position. In our approach, we present multiple strategies and also deal with the known limitations and available research findings associated with the different approaches we discuss. Most of the popularized professional development literature lacks this balance. When I read promotions of student coding, project based learning, or a position such as Internet searching rather than fact learning, I cringe. The research literature simply would argue that in general these are flawed positions. In other words, promotion of these positions as strategies that are generally superior are misleading and poorly informed (e.g., learning by doing is superior). This schism between the research findings and the desires of those promoting without critical analysis a given strategy is difficult to justify.
So, if you are willing to pay someone for a product, I would suggest it is most valuable to invest in products that offer a careful analysis of strengths and weaknesses rather than attempt to popularize a new idea without an open mind to what is known about effectiveness.
