MA BOOK DESIGN THESIS
University of Reading, 2014
I have a keen interest in books and publications belonging to the educational sector. This is my dissertation for the Masters programme at the University of Reading. It identifes features that contribute to the design of science textbooks being used in India and the UK, for children of the age group of 11-14 years. Two samples of science textbooks for this age group have been selected from each of the two countries. These are analysed using a framework adapted from existing models. Theories related to strategic reading, the design of instructional text and the design of textbooks have been incorporated into the framework to make it suitable for this analysis.
The books are compared and described under the three levels of the framework – micro, macro and meta (Gillieson: 2008). The analysis of this dissertation identifies the similarities and differences between the chosen samples of textbooks and highlights design features that contribute to the effect of page layout in children’s science textbooks.
