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
and visual material, designed for teaching and learning a particular subject following particular methodological and didactical principles. Tarigan and
Tarigan 1986 in Prihatinah 2012 describes textbook as a standardized book of a particular subject, which is designed by experts in their particular field for
instructional purposes, equipped by suitable features which are easy to understand by its users in schools and universities in regard to supporting their learning and
teaching programs. Meanwhile Hutchinson and Torres 1994 interpret textbook in its broader term as an organized and pre-packaged set of teachinglearning
materials which furthermore, in their journal The Textbook as Agent of Change, specified their use of the term to encompass both the individual book and the
package. An interesting view of looking at textbook’s practical definition,
however, comes from Johnsen 2001 who acknowledges that “the term textbook is neither precise nor stable.” He found that some books which authors did not
initially intend their books to be used in instructional sequences, such as Shakespeare’s plays which are brought into a classroom and used for teaching, are
not to be excluded as textbook-related media. In such a case, he emphasized the importance of the purposes and reasons of why such particular books are designed
and produced in the first place. This makes the term textbook to have the definition of books written, designed and produced specifically for instructional
use, as for books used in instruction but less closely tied to pedagogic sequences, he later preferred to call them schoolbooks.
The term textbook in this research considers the definitions of the term textbook above and tries to adapt what Indonesian people have in mind regarding
the culture of textbooks in Indonesian educational context. As it is indeed closer to the term coursebook above all else, the researcher mainly referred to the definition
of textbook as it is stated in the Permendiknas 11-2005 that, “Textbook is a compulsory instructional book to be used at schools,
containing learning materials which objective is to improve the quality of faith and devotion, character and personality, ability to mastering
science and technology, esthetical ability and sensitivity, physical and health potentials, which is designed by the national standard of
education.”
2. Textbooks in Indonesia
