Reaction Paper: Seeking Consensus in Course Book Evaluation

This article, which was published in 1997 by Fred Chambers, exposes several ideas to

consider at the moment of selecting course books for teaching. Among Chambers’ ideas, he

mentions not only how to evaluate materials but also the benefits of evaluating course books by

groups of teachers. Indeed, that is the first point which is introduced in this article. Basically, the

benefits of reaching consensus in course book evaluations are two, there is a reduction of teachers

who do not want to innovate and there is a sense of partnership and also ownership in the

decision. Also, this author indicates there are models at the moment of choosing materials; these

models are mind models (unconscious ideas and preferences) and explicit models (defined steps

of selection) whose this article is based on. Subsequently, Chamber points that the criteria to

determine if the chosen materials are good or not can be decided according to a set of features to

analyze, previous results obtained from previous experiences and students’ views and needs.

Accordingly to this author, there is not a specific model to evaluate course books because of the

points mentioned before, but what is important to remark is that Chambers proposes a set of eight

steps that every method of course book evaluation should contain. Among them, we may find

that it is necessary to identify the possible alternatives (course books) in relation to several

criteria like their availability or their accessibility in terms of money. Finally, the judgments must

consider not only the evaluation of the course book itself, but also its extra materials such as CD-

ROM, audio CD, videos etc.

Even though this article expounded a lot of precepts that will help to determine the

evaluative components at the moment of assessing course books, it has some elements which are

important to draw our attention. These elements are favourable for anybody who is interested in

this topic, but, on the other hand, there are others which are not enough friendly for readers,
especially if this is their first time evaluating course books. For instance, this article promotes

evaluative sessions constituted by groups of teachers instead of individual work, which is

extremely valuable for the benefits that evaluative groups reach together. On the other hand, this

article contains an element which was not well-developed and explained as it should be. It is the

point “different ways to reaching decisions” and its main problem is the following, it is

subdivided into three categories (reality decisions, action decisions and value decisions) that are

so briefly explained and each example of them is not so clear that they may cause

misunderstanding in readers because of the author’s lack of development on this idea.

Additionally, it is important to highlight this point because if an unfamiliarised reader in this

topic reads that point, he may get stuck in the reading and also he may think that the following

points can be more difficult, which is something serious. Regarding of the previous detail, this

text is amazingly recommended to anyone who is expanding his knowledge of the process of

assessment course books but it is, also, friendly for readers who are exploring the world of

evaluating course books because it contains the necessary point which give to the reader a clear

insight of the necessary processes to carry on an evaluation on this subject.

 References

Chambers, F. (1997). Seeking consensus in coursebook evaluation. ELT Journal, 51 (1/1), 29-35.