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1981
Volume 17, Issue 4
  • ISSN: 1539-7785
  • E-ISSN: 2048-0717

Abstract

In this article, I provide a short but broad history of the textbook as a multimedia pedagogical and cultural form. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the interrelationship of oral and textual media and cultures, highlighting the ways that these two communicative modes are reconfigured over the history of this pedagogical form. I also situate the textbook in the context of changing instructional methods and practices, and I demonstrate that instructional forms and practices have neither progressed along with new technologies nor gradually evolved from a primitive orality to sophisticated literacy. Instead, I show that these practices as well as textbook media change much more in synchrony with larger cultural and epistemological developments – such as those identified by Michel Foucault, Friedrich Kittler and other historians of media and culture.

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2018-12-01
2026-04-16

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