Análisis de los elementos didácticos en los libros de texto de matemáticas. Aplicación a la etapa de educación primaria y valoración desde la perspectiva de los estilos de aprendizaje de los estudiantes

Abstract

This research is aimed at finding methodological improvements in mathematics instruction. It is mainly focused on textbooks, since these are some of the most popular curriculum materials in Primary Education. The procedure followed to design, create and validate a tool to analyse the way in which these didactic elements ¿the mathematics textbooks¿ are handled is detailed below. This is also an instrument that allows for the assessment of the extent to which mathematics textbooks are useful to develop the different learning styles of students. The devised theoretical framework identifies and studies benchmarks in the areas of mathematical education, the curriculum of Primary Education and research on textbooks. This framework reviews several studies related to the use and analysis of textbooks in general and mathematics textbooks in particular, so as to establish the bases and indicators needed to create the analysis tool. The definitive tool is based on a design which mainly uses descriptive methods and, particularly, the content analysis technique. The above mentioned tool is structured in five axes (formal aspects, contents, methodology, activities and affective aspects), encompassing fifteen elements described in a handbook in which methods are associated with one of the four learning styles (active, reflexive, theoretical and pragmatic) resulting from the students' internalisation, of a specific phase of the cyclical learning process. The analysed sample is made up of nine textbooks published by three of the most popular publishing houses in Spanish Primary schools, and more in particular, in the second, fourth and sixth years. In order to use the designed tool in a comprehensive way, the sample was made up of the entire three books chosen from each of the three publishing houses. We have verified that, in general, the representation of the four students¿ learning styles is similar in the nine analysed textbooks. It can also be noted that active learning is the less encouraged style in all these books. The results obtained from the analysis of each didactic element contained in these textbooks have allowed for the devising of a proposal to improve the quality of mathematics textbooks in Primary Education. This study represents a small contribution to the attempt, on the one hand, to provide teachers and future teachers with strategies and tools for textbook analysis so that they are able to define, choose and adequately use textbooks; and, on the other hand, to provide the actors involved in textbook design and preparation, with a series of proposals to improve the didactic potential of the aforementioned materials, so that they can meet the needs of every student.