Textbooks for the New Ukrainian School as a Means of Effective Educational Communication: Discourse Analysis and Problems of the Culture of the Edition

Abstract

The purpose of the study, which we started in October 2018 with the support of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the intergovernmental Ukrainian-Finnish project “Learning together”, is to analyze the quality of modern textbooks for the first grade of the New Ukrainian School, to identify outdated scientific paradigms, to identify and systematize cultural problems of textbook publication, which should be taken into account during the editorial and publishing of textbooks for the second and third grades. Methodology. At the initial stage of the study, a bibliographic method was used for the identification and systematization of scientific sources, normative legal documents on the problems of textbook creation. The use of methods of discourse analysis, logical, semantic, context analysis of text and visual components of textbooks for the first grade of the New Ukrainian School made it possible to identify the problematic aspects of the textbook publication culture. Typical flaws in the culture of textbook publication for the New Ukrainian School are systematized using methods of scientific generalization and classification. The results of the research showed a number of problems: visualization of outdated Soviet discourse, systematic errors, consistency and logic of presentation of the material, fairly low linguistic culture of publications, and sometimes unsatisfactory quality of artistic design. The solution of these problems requires a complex, systemic and integrative approaches. This includes the training of editors, publishers, authors, the formation of their high social responsibility, the creation of a single scientific and informational space for authors, reviewers and editors based on the leading publishing houses and academic departments of publishing and editing, the organization of seminars, trainings, summer/winter schools, etc. Such work has already begun within the preparatory stage of the international project “Finnish support for a New Ukrainian School”. The results of the research were used during the All-Ukrainian scientific and practical seminar “New textbook for the New Ukrainian School: Requirements, criteria for evaluation, registration” organized by the Institute for the modernization of the content of education for publishers who worked on textbooks for the second grade of the New Ukrainian School (November 22, 2018), training for experts who assessed the textbook for the second grade of the New Ukrainian School (January 21-23, 2019) and training sessions for publishers of textbooks for the New Ukrainian School (March 12-15, 2019), prepared by using experts from the Ukrainian- Finnish project “Learning together.”