Scientific High School - Textbooks

• Scientific High School - Textbooks

Its definition

The textbook is still the most widely used teaching tool through which students realize their path of knowledge and learning. It represents the main meeting place between the teacher's skills and the student's expectations, the preferred channel on which educational communication is activated. The textbook proves to be a valuable tool at the service of the flexibility in the organization of educational paths introduced by the school of autonomy: it must be adaptable to different needs, supplemented and enriched by other texts and publications, as well as by alternative educational tools.

Format

All textbooks adopted by the S. Freud School are in digital format, e-books.

Consultation phase 
The adoption of textbooks constitutes a particularly significant moment in the school's activity. The basic criterion that presides over this delicate operation is defined by Article 4 of the Autonomy Regulations, which stipulates that the choice, adoption and use of teaching methods and tools, including textbooks, must be consistent with the Educational Offer Plan and implemented in a transparent and timely manner.

The adoption of textbooks, as stipulated in Article 7 of Legislative Decree No. 297 of April 16, 1994, is part of the tasks assigned to the board of teachers, after hearing the opinion of the interclass or class councils. Thus, the first stage of text evaluation represents a very important opportunity for parents' participation in school activities and their collaboration with the teaching staff. Indeed, in the relevant legislation, the establishment of joint committees, consisting of teachers, parents and students, is advocated in order to carry out a preliminary analysis of both texts already in use and new publishing proposals.

Adoption
The indications that emerge from the collegial moments of evaluation thus facilitate the final part of the entire process, that in which the colleges of teachers make the adoption resolutions, that is, they finally choose the texts on which students will embark on their path toward learning and growth.

Among the requirements that the college must take into account in this delicate operation is that relating to the development of fundamental content of the individual disciplines, so the book must present content proper to each teaching, while highlighting the links and connections with other disciplines; that which concerns the use of language consistent with the age of the recipients, designed therefore to ensure maximum comprehensibility; the textbook must also bear very clear bibliographical indications, to allow for any in-depth study; finally, it must be presented with indications that reveal its approach and methodology, and must state the prerequisites necessary for students to make full use of the teaching tool, as well as the learning objectives that the book itself sets and the criteria for any verifications. It constitutes a note of merit the presence within the book of a glossary to help understand the meaning of less frequently used terms used in the text. All this, without neglecting the general indications, concerning, for example, the number of pages and the format of the volume, contained in the relevant decrees on standards and warnings for the compilation of textbooks to be used in compulsory education (among others, Ministerial Decree 41 of April 8, 2009).
Recent changes to adoptions introduced by Law 169 of 2008 (Art. 5) oblige educational institutions to adopt only those texts for which the Publishers undertake to keep the content unchanged for a five-year period (additions are allowed only for necessary updates that must be published in separate appendices).

Duration of adoptions
Article 5 of Law No. 169/2008 significantly changed the duration of school textbook adoptions. Whereas until the current school year textbook adoptions had a one-year duration (i.e., teachers had the option of choosing texts for their students each year), adoptions made under the new legislation will have a five-year duration for elementary school and for six years in grades I and II secondary schools.

Prices
The board of teachers take as a limit within which to decide on adoptions the indication of the maximum total price of the necessary book equipment, established each year by the Central Administration.

Each year a decree of the Ministry establishes the cover prices of the school's texts It is also possible to use loan or rental of texts.

Data transmission and publication of adoptions
Resolutions to adopt textbooks are transmitted electronically to the Italian Publishers Association and published on the school's bulletin board as well as on its website, dividing books between mandatory and recommended. In cases where a school does not have its own website, the list of adopted texts must be forwarded to the provincial school office.