Resumen de Considerateness of Fifth-Grade Social Studies Texts
This article describes an investigation which examined the “considerateness” of five recently published fifth-grade social studies textbooks using the following selected elements of considerateness: (1) “readability” level; (2) placement of relevant pictures/illustrations; (3) use of subtitles; and (4) use of words and phrases to connect ideas within and between sentences. The results revealed that the publishers of the analyzed social texts made extensive use of relevant pictures/illustrations and subtitles; however, they rarely used words which connected ideas between and within sentences, and readability level determinations were considered appropriate for these fifth-grade texts in only 8 of 25 analyses. We determined that these textbooks were considerate of the reader when dealing with factors other than those related to connected discourse. Subtitles and graphic aids were numerous, compensating for inconsiderate text. The discussion concludes with an examination of the implications for writing social studies text.
