Research Objectives Significance of the Research

competencies for then the subjects adapt to the competencies. The Curriculum 2013 also underlines that competencies are not to be taught but to be developed. This concept became the origin of the core competence. There are four changed elements in the Curriculum 2013 which are realized in four standards: passing competence standard, process standard, content standard and assessment standard. One which makes a fundamental difference which affects the other differences compared to the former curriculum and quite revolutionary considering the nature of the previous curricula ever existed in Indonesia is the concept of core competence. Core competence acts as the ladder towards the achievement of passing competence standard. The core competence is not bound by the school subjects as it does not represent any particular subjects, rather it forms a horizontal interdisciplinary relationship among the school subjects. The core competences for all school subjects within the same level of grade are the same, while the relationship of the core competences between levels of grade is a continuous relatedness. The core competences are then elaborated and interpreted differently by each school subject in the form of basic competences. This resulted in the holistic approach which, according to Nuh 2012, is called thematic-integrative approach. When asked about the reason behind the need of having a new curriculum, Nuh 2012a refers to two international surveys about student’s competence: Trends in International Math and Science by Global Institute in 2007 and Program for International Student Assessment by Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2009. Both studies agreed that Indonesian students showed an unfavorable result especially in creativity. Therefore, referring to those studies, a change of curriculum which can help improve the students’ competences and ultimately prepare the new generation to survive and keep up with the changing times is necessary. Also for this reason, the new curriculum will emphasize the competences of attitude and skills, aside from competence of knowledge which has been of concern before. The new curriculum believes that creativity can be developed through education, that is, by extending the learning activities through several stages: observing, questioning, reasoning, experimenting and presenting. The objects of learning have also been determined in the core competence by offering students to have a critical thinking on natural phenomenon, social phenomenon, arts and culture through the thematic- integrative approach.

B. Textbooks

Textbooks have become part of the lives of learners and teachers in many educational settings, disregarding the time and place of either inside or outside the classroom, sometimes to the point that it may feel incomplete without having textbooks supporting them. It can be understood that textbooks have become influential resources as they offer various features proved to be beneficial to the learning and teaching activities. The textbook design has also been always developing, either in terms of their contents or their physical appearances to meet the ever-changing demands of their users as well as the educational system surrounding them. In this sub-chapter, the researcher wishes to explore the experts’ judgments regarding the definition of textbook, the history of textbooks development in Indonesia, and finally the significance of textbooks in the life of learners, teachers, and the education-related parties in general. “...the fact is that coursebooks are ‘here’, and are even exploited in traditional environments as a method of controlling large classes of learners.” Sheldon, 1988

1. Definition of Textbooks

The term textbook is often understood as any book related to the learning activity of a particular subject, whether it is a reference book, a manual, a workbook, an exercise book, etc. While sounding quite a broad term, many writers referring textbook in the learning and teaching literature consider it to have a closer meaning to a coursebook or packaged learning materials that both terms sometimes used interchangeably. Sheldon 1988, in his journal Evaluating ELT Textbooks and Materials, frequently used the term coursebook as one main subject of his journal while preferred to use the term textbook in the title. Harmer 2001, in his Practice of Language Teaching, used the term coursebook consistently while referring to journals and articles which actually used the term textbook. Interestingly, there are a few writers which clarify the term textbook in their writings which incidentally bring about textbooks as its main subject. It is possible that in the learning and teaching context, the term textbook has been widely accepted as a broad term to refer to books used in the learning and teaching setting while in practice it can be more specifically intended to refer to coursebook. There are of course some scholarly definitions found in some literature such as Sercu 2000 who defines the term textbook as bound collection of textual