“Nope. I don’t use a textbook.” That’s the answer Bruce Forbes gives in his article. It’s about why he chooses not to use one for introductory courses and what he does instead. One of his main reasons for not using one is that he feels that they seldom engage students or leave a lasting impression. He prefers using an eclectic list of reading assignments. However, he does say that new teachers may find them helpful. He goes on to unpack more reasons why he doesn’t use one and more specifics on what he does to replace a single text. I found this helpful as I think about textbooks and/or reading that I wish to include in a syllabus. You can find the complete article by going http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.mutex.gmu.edu/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9647.2009.00532.x/full
If you have trouble accessing it, let me know.
Bass
Bass,
I wonder why you do not need a textbook for teaching in your field of religion studies? What about the bible? Under what conditions or learning outcomes that we can bypass principles, or at least some fundamental body of knowledge?
Actually, I probably would use a textbook most of the time. But I have struggled in the past finding one that I felt did everything I wanted. So the idea of using a variety of sources is one option to consider. Of course, I do imagine that the Bible would always be one of them.
Thanks to your comments and questions, I have be doing a little deeper thinking about this matter of choosing textbooks. Let me share some of what comes to mind.
I realize that I need some standard by which to measure and compare the various textbooks and resources available. Reflecting on what we have been doing, discussing and reading in class, the following ones come to mind:
If I were a student in this class, which textbooks would I find most engaging and interesting? I tend to be student-centered in my teaching and would try to come at this as best I could from the perspective of a student (even if that is not entirely possible).
Which ones match or best reflect my own teaching philosophy? It seems to me that textbooks are written assuming or even presenting some approach to and understanding of the teaching/learning process. So I think I would have to examine them with an eye toward discovering that approach in light of my own. Do they mesh? Do they conflict? Even if they conflict, can I use that in some helpful way?
Which textbooks or resources will best help me and the students achieve the outcomes or goals set for the class?
What I am discovering from this class is that a lot of groundwork needs to be done in terms of not just how I see teaching/learning and students, but especially the differences I would want each course to make in the lives of students. Once this kind of thinking and planning has been done, it does make tasks like choosing a textbook somewhat easier. Anyway, it is certainly, I hope, a more intentional way of approaching it than the eeny, meeny, miny moe method!
Does any of this make sense? Perhaps Dr. Smith will share with us how she goes about choosing texts.
Bass
Bass, one of my favorite courses was an Individualized Studies class at Mason a few years ago, where we did not have a textbook. There were selected articles and a short autobiographical novel to read. The rest was reflection and writing. I loved it! It should be noted that this was a 300 level class.
Ginny
The choice of a textbook or what resources to use is pretty important. My sense is that it really depends on the course and what you’re learning outcomes are for it. Not using one makes more sense to me if you are dealing with upper level classes in which the students have had a good introduction to the subject area (but is that always the case?)
The author of the article I read didn’t use one for even the introductory class in religion. But he used a variety of resources (human, too). I think I would prefer using one, if I could find a good one, and then later, once I have been though a few semesters, perhaps try something else as an experiment. Lots to think about…thanks for reading and replying.
Bass
I sometimes use a textbook in undergraduate learning communities, but I am not always successful with a textbook, in that sometimes the ratio of inherent value to cost is not good, from the students’ point of view.
A lot of the time now I try to build an online textbook customized for each learning community, either from articles and book chapters freely available on the web, or via the databases available via the George Mason University libraries.
Partly I was pushed into doing this very early on, as one of the fields in which I teach is new media literacy/digital cultures and by the time textbooks are published a largish proportion of the material is out of date.
But partly it allows me to mix different kinds of readings – research articles, in-depth specialist magazine-style reporting, popular punditry (and polemic), student-authored and created work – and integrate other kinds of media (multimedia, short films, extracts from longer documentaries, tv shows (or segments thereof, etc.) archive footage from YouTube, audio, etc.