Between the market and the school: textbook approval, selection and evaluation in Portugal

Abstract

Until now, the selection of textbooks was delegated to each school and regulated by market forces. More recently, in order to improve the quality of textbooks, the Portuguese Ministry of Education initiated a new policy by implementing pedagogic evaluation. As Portugal introduces this new system, the purpose of this paper is to outline the position of publishers concerning their criteria for approval, selection and evaluation of textbooks. To achieve this goal, discourse analysis has been used. Empirical data have been gathered from two sources: first, media texts published between 2005 and 2007; second, a questionnaire completed by Portuguese teachers in 2009. For the purposes of this paper, only the data available in media texts will be discussed here. We will try to show that publishers strongly resist the Ministry ’s new approval process. They stand up for the product they sell, arguing that textbook quality can be judged by all teachers during the selection process. On the other side, teachers seem to agree with the lack of quality of a significant number of these books, and so agree with the need for reviewing their daily classroom resource.