Over one million students are enrolled in basic college speech courses each year, providing big business for publishers and authors of speech texts and an opportunity for abuse by faculty who have authored a text or who want to curry favor with a department head who has authored a text. Most multisection basic course programs taught by graduate…

Although there are many college freshman writing textbooks on the market, the selection of a textbook can be made simpler by following a number of guidelines. Teachers should examine textbooks they consider using to make certain the books contain the following elements: (1) appropriate readability for users; (2) textual features, such as self-help…

As a pilot effort to match research and development information and products with textual materials being used by schools in the northwest region of the United States, this catalog focuses on materials for writing instruction at grades six through nine. The first section lists products and materials in alphabetical arrangement by title. For each…

To assist California school district personnel in their selection of state-adopted instructional materials, this catalog of literature materials consists of four parts. The first, an annotated index of instructional materials identified as basic materials, gives pertinent information about each literature program, including program title, year of…

Censorship of books and learning materials is a growing trend nationwide, according to responses from a 1980 survey of 1,891 public elementary and secondary school administrators and library personnel from across the country and of state administrators overseeing evaluation and adoption of textbooks in 21 states. This summary and interpretation of…

This full report of a nationwide survey provides data on the range of procedures and policies currently followed in selecting textbooks and other instructional materials, the extent to which these materials have been challenged, and the resolution of such challenges. The survey sample comprised school administrators and library personnel from…

Recent research demonstrates that one in five school districts is under pressure to purge objectionable books from its libraries and classrooms. This paper briefly summarizes literature and court decisions dealing with censorship in the schools and describes a study of censorship in Illinois schools. In the study, a 68-item questionnaire asked 200…

This document outlines the music curriculum for students in grades K-8 in Arizona public schools. Developers state that music educators should use the document as the content criteria for selecting state adopted textbooks and materials. As a result of participating in the music program, students should develop an increasing commitment to music,…

Most speech communication curricula have room for only three organizational courses: (1) business and professional speech communication (B and P), usually offered to freshmen and sophomores; (2) an introduction to organizational communication, presented to sophomores and upper-class students; and (3) a seminar in organizational communication, for…

Teachers of all subjects at all levels are constantly searching for helpful new materials, and many corporations and special interest organizations have responded by preparing and distributing free or low-cost materials for "educational" purposes. However, a teacher should preview such materials carefully before using them to determine whether…

The Iowa State Department of Public Instruction has developed an instructional materials selection policy and procedures to help achieve appropriate assignment of selection responsibility and quality selection while guarding against unwarranted censorship of materials. The model emphasized the ongoing nature of media selection, involving…

The two readers used in this study were both editions of the Ginn Basal Reading Series. Illustrations in the older Revised Editions depicted no black characters. The newer 100 Editions introduce black characters in the illustrations. The research tested children's preferences for these basal readers by sex, grade level, achievement levels within…

This annotated bibliography summarizes 11 selected publications concerned with the general topic of textbook content and selection. The selections are intended to give practicing educators easy access to the most significant and useful information on school textbooks that is available from the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). All…

The subjects were 72 black and 72 white second-grade children, with an equal number of boys and girls in each racial group. Two sets of the same twelve stories from one edition of a basal reader were used, one set featuring illustrations of white characters and the other black characters. Each child was read three story pairs by a white adult and…