Texts are used at all levels of education as a method or aid in helping students learn the content of a given course. Indeed, the importance of the textbook to student learning is perhaps no better stated than by Ornstein and Hunkins (1993):
...the textbook has the longest and most obvious influence on the curriculum...traditionally, it has been the most frequently used instructional material...In terms of purchasing, it receives the highest priority...Textbooks can have a strong influence or even dominate the nature and sequence of a course and thus profoundly affect the learning experiences of students...(p. 360).
And yet, despite the importance of the text as a learning resource, most teachers do nothing with the text beyond what Vacca and Vacca (1996) have termed "assigning and telling." In other words, teachers tend to assign students' certain chapters and/or sections of the text to read and then, in the following days, talk about or tell them about the material covered in the text assignment.
Some educators have noted this limited usage of such an important learning resource and have offered new strategies of teachers to use in order to move beyond simply assigning text material and talking with students about it later. Some of the most frequently recommended strategies are discussed below.
One strategy that can be used by teachers to move beyond assigning and telling as the only means of text utilization is a strategy developed by Schumm and Mangrum (1991) termed "FLIP."
The FLIP strategy, used primarily with middle and secondary level students, consists of a method that students can use to evaluate the level of difficult associated with a given text assignment. This evaluation of difficulty level can then be used as the basis for formulating a realistic notion of the amount of time to allocate to learning the material covered.
The term FLIP stands for the questions students must consider in making the...