Prizewinners: Navi Mathematik, Zeitreise and geni@l Klick are the ‘textbooks of the year 2012’

Prizewinners: Navi Mathematik, Zeitreise and geni@l Klick are the ‘textbooks of the year 2012’

The winners of the textbook prize have been selected. On 16 March the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research awarded the ‘textbook of the year’ prize to three works in the context of the Leipzig Book Fair. Zeitreise 1 is the textbook of the year in the category ‘history and society’. Navi Mathematik won the prize in the category ‘MINT’, and geni@l Klick won the prize in the category ‘languages’. Together with the Leipzig Book Fair, the Georg Eckert Institute initiated this prize in order to promote quality and innovation in textbooks. The prize, which was awarded for the first time this year, is sponsored by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany.

‘We award prizes to textbooks which appeal to pupils and reflect the environment in which they live, which motivate them and contribute towards preparing young people to face the challenges of the future. Our aim is to reward the exceptional work of publishers and authors and to promote debate about educational media which is in keeping with our age, and which does not resort to the all too common practice of “scolding” textbooks’. This is how the chairperson of the jury, Professor Simone Lässig, described the aim of the textbook prize. Whether published on paper or electronically, Lässig claimed that textbooks reflect state sanctioned knowledge and are, in terms of the number of people they reach, genuine ‘mass media’.

The prize-giving ceremony at the Leipzig Book Fair took place in the presence of around 150 guests from academia, politics and education, and was attended by the state minister Professor Jürgen Staupe on behalf of the Standing Conference, and by Professor Fabian, mayor of Leipzig. In her ceremonial address, the Suhrkamp author and book designer Judith Schalansky, who made her fame with her much appraised novel about a biology teacher called The Giraffe’s Neck, emphasised the fact that textbooks are closely tied up with the context from which they arise. ‘Nothing is as instructive as reading old books. They are documents of collective memory which offer lessons in humility. Only by recognising that knowledge – however irrefutable this may seem – has a history of its own can we take leave of our own entrenched standpoint’. Schalansky is convinced that textbooks play a special role in the age of digitalisation and the internet. ‘Curated contents are becoming all the more important as exuberant and arbitrary information is becoming more readily available. The book of the moment is the compendium. And what are school textbooks other than compendia which manage world knowledge in an agreeable way?’.

Zeitreise 1 – ‘textbook of the year 2012’ in the category ‘history and society’
The history textbook Zeitreise 1 (Ernst Klett 2011), in the ‘history and society’, category is easy to understand, clear and relevant to the present day – this is how the jury justified its choice of this work. ‘It provides an almost perfect combination of factuality, scholarliness, readability and inner coherence. In terms of its language, the work succeeds in performing a balancing act between factual accuracy, pertinence and suitability for pupils’. Other works shortlisted for the prize in this category were Lernbuch Geschichte. Mittelalter (Ernst Klett 2010) and politik.21 (C. C. Buchners Verlag 2011).

Navi Mathematik 7 – ‘textbook of the year’ in the category ‘MINT’
Navi Mathematik 7 (Bildungsverlag EINS, 2010) is a maths textbook designed for special needs schools and was selected on account of its clarity, intelligibility and innovativeness in natural science and technical subjects (MINT). ‘This textbook is an exemplary and innovative work, based on a consistent conceptual design geared towards pupils’ competencies, and which convincingly relates its subject matter to everyday life and straightforward distinctions’. Other books considered for this prize were Das Mathematikbuch, 6. Lernumgebungen. Ausgabe A (Ernst Klett 2010) and Linder Biologie SI, 1 (edition compiled for Baden Württemberg, Schroedel, 2011).

geni@l Klick, A1. Deutsch für Jugendliche – winners in the category ‘languages‘
The jury praised the prize-winning work in the category ‘languages’ (geni@l Klick, A1. Deutsch für Jugendliche (Langenscheidt, 2011)) as an ‘outstanding textbook for teaching communication skills in German as a foreign language’. It brings together a variety of media offerings geared in particular towards self-assessment and to providing guidance concerning a number of different learning conditions. It was appraised as a ‘model for future textbooks which might also be used beyond the scope of foreign language learning’. Other nominations included Praxis Sprache, 5, published by Westermann.

‘Teacher’s prize‘ goes to Menschen-Zeiten-Räume
A fourth ‘teacher’s prize’ was awarded to the social studies teacher’s book Menschen – Zeiten – Räume, published by Cornelsen. An online poll involving 317 people called upon teachers to vote for the book which provided them with the most effective support with their teaching practice.

Selection procedure
Textbook publishers were requested to submit up to three books. From a total of 34 textbooks, the expert jury (which included academics, specialists of teaching methodology and teachers) assessed the quality of the overall presentation of the subject and its methodological precepts before shortlisting eight books. These were all newly published or republished works covering all subjects and school types from the pre-A level secondary school level (years 1 to 5). Almost all these works contained cross-media supplements, though exclusively electronic media were not among this year’s submissions.

The jury
The jury assembled around Professor Simone Lässig included the subject domain specialists Professor Karl-Heinrich Pohl (Christian Albrechts Universität Kiel/social sciences and history), Professor Katrin Sommer (Ruhr Universität Bochum/MINT) and Professor Claudia Finkbeiner (Universität Kassel/languages) as well as the chairman of the Association for Educational Media Wilmar Diepgrond, the English and history teachers from Göttingen Dr Dorothea Trittel (Max Planck Grammar School in Göttingen) and the expert in competence guidance and educational psychologist from Kiel Professor Olaf Köller (Director of the Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education). The ministries of cultural affairs of the German Länder were also involved in the development of criteria and requirements for the assessment of textbooks submitted to be considered for the prize.

Cooperation between the Leipzig Book Fair and the Georg Eckert Institute
With the ‘Focus on Education’ theme the Leipzig Book Fair has consolidated its emphasis on education. About 24,000 of the 163,000 visitors to the fair are teachers, tutors or youth care workers. By awarding prizes to outstanding textbooks the Leipzig Book Fair contributes towards the qualification of education on offer. The Georg Eckert Institute, a member of the Leibniz Association, is a non-university centre for textbook research which carries out cultural studies and historical research into textbooks. Its infrastructure and transfer activities are also of benefit to educational practice.

Further information about the textbook prize and the nominated works can be found here: www.schulbuch-des-jahres.de

The ‘textbook of the year’ is organised by the Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig in collaboration with the Leipzig Book Fair. The prize is sponsored by the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Contakt:

Regina Peper (Referentin für Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit)
Georg-Eckert-Institut für internationale Schulbuchforschung
Celler Straße 3
38114 Braunschweig
Tel.: 0531-59099-54 oder
Mobil: 0151-62842664
Email: peper@gei.de - www.gei.de

Nancy Pfaff (Pressesprecherin)
Leipziger Messe GmbH
Messe-Allee 1
04356 Leipzig
Tel.: 0341-678-6554
Fax: 0341-678-166554