PERCEPTION OF THE LAYOUT OF STUDY TEXTS BY A TEACHER

Abstract

The authors of textbooks should pay attention to how the content, the concept and as well as the layout of the textbook is perceived by readers - students. However it is necessary to know how teachers evaluate the textbook because they determine the trend how their students exploit the textbook. This article is a pilot study of the issues of perception and attention of learning texts by the teachers of mathematics and physics of elementary and secondary schools. The research was conducted during two workshops for teachers in November 2018. Within these sessions, teachers presented their comments and suggestions on various mathematical and physics teaching materials. Meeting participants were also subjected to eye-tracking testing of different learning materials. The goal of this testing was to identify the attention and browsing very differently conceived texts. One of the key findings is that teachers themselves consider teaching materials with excess text to be inappropriate. Also, the photographs or illustrations used must be designed in a modern style. For example, black and white images are considered to be inappropriate. In broad consensus, these views are held by teachers of different generations. In most cases, male teachers paid more attention to individual materials - read more thoroughly the materials. Both genders in textbooks, for example, do not pay attention to formulas. In the case of illustrations and pictures, the caption and its suitability within the theme are of particular interest. Overall, teachers are more focused on texts, with the emphasis on selecting / evaluating whether the text will be understood from the student's point of view. Teachers of younger and middle age, especially males, consider electronic documents as the key future of learning materials. At the same time, they are very actively using them. Older teachers in these documents also see the future, however, for their greater use, they are prevented by the lack of ICT knowledge.