What is the role of textbooks in promoting teaching, and how does this role relate to teachers’ subject knowledge, qualifications and autonomy? In this article, we study one aspect of the relationship between the use of textbooks and good teaching by examining how teachers’ subject knowledge in the subject they are expected to teach relates to how they use and rely on textbooks. To do so, we draw on ethnographic data including classroom observation of geography lessons and teacher interviews in upper primary government school classrooms in Bihar, India. We analysed teaching episodes in terms of distinct pedagogical strategies, namely, ostensive teaching, acquaintance knowledge and memory. These categories were identified through normative content analysis which recognises the distinct forms of knowledge, and specifically, different types of inferential relationships. This categorisation enables us to distinguish between teachers with and without a postgraduate or undergraduate qualification in geography in their use of the textbook and pedagogical strategies. Our findings support the claims of those who maintain that textbooks can be a powerful pedagogical tool, and not simply a teaching script in the hands of poorly qualified teachers.

中文翻译：

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教科书式教学：教师是一门学科的实践者？

教科书在促进教学中的作用是什么，这个作用与教师的学科知识、资历和自主性有什么关系？在本文中，我们通过考察教师在所教授学科中的学科知识与他们如何使用和依赖教科书的关系，来研究教科书的使用与良好教学之间关系的一个方面。为此，我们利用了人种学数据，包括对印度比哈尔邦政府高年级学校课堂地理课的课堂观察和教师访谈。我们根据不同的教学策略分析教学片段，即明示教学、熟识知识和记忆。这些类别是通过规范内容分析确定的，该分析识别不同形式的知识，特别是，不同类型的推理关系。这种分类使我们能够在使用教科书和教学策略时区分具有和不具有地理学研究生或本科学历的教师。我们的研究结果支持那些认为教科书可以成为一种强大的教学工具的人的主张，而不仅仅是素质低下的教师手中的教学脚本。