TEXTBOOK EVALUATION

This is a textbook evaluation, which we have evaluated a book named “Living Psychology”, written by Karen Huffman, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., in United States of America, in the year 2005. In this textbook evaluation, we will discussed about the book in term of three aspects, organization, content, and physical aspect.

Firstly, from we would like to evaluate the organization of this book. From our observation, it provides a useful table of contents, glossary and index, where they are mentioned in detail. Especially, we can see how the table of contents has mentioned the sub-chapters clearly in every chapter and organized in a good order. Absolutely, the table of content shows a logical arrangement and development of subject, where the book introduce psychology first in term of its meaning, history and research methods used in psychology before they proceed with discussion in other following chapters. Besides, this textbook is also uniform in appearance and content layout throughout the book as well as within each chapter. For instance, each chapter of this book has its similarity in term of it contains a description on applying psychology to work, or to student life, or to everyday life. In term of references, bibliography, and other resources, this book provides useful and sufficient information since they are written in very detail. In this book, we found that chapters are provided with clear and comprehensive introduction and summaries. As evidence, each chapter contains a section named “Check & Review”, where it summarized the chapter by highlighting the key term and main concept of the chapter. Moreover, we also found all pages of this book are numbered.

Secondly, from the content aspect, we found that this book meets local and international standards since it is written and used by many universities in several countries as standardized textbook for psychology subject and absolutely the content of it is accurate and up-to-date since it is discussed psychology subject in current settings. Besides, absolutely this book’s content is supported by other textbooks that students have or will use since it describes psychology from general areas, and need to be supported by other textbook which cover a specific area of psychology. For instance, it requires support information by books of personality psychology in order to gain in depth information regarding a sub-chapter which discuss about personality psychology subject. This textbook provides appropriate use of language for its intended group, which is undergraduate students, and certainly it is grammatically correct. It also contains age appropriate reading level, and also has end-of-lesson quizzes through “Assessment” section in each section. Besides, these textbook lessons’ are also linked with other subject areas. For instance, for the discussion on social psychology, it is also somehow related to sociology subject, where the scope is about what are the roles or psychology in sociological aspects and so on. Furthermore, we ought to say the activities in this textbook can engage students in active learning and they are appealing to a wide range of abilities and interests. Since the textbook covers “study of soul”, which is the literal meaning of psychology, the students will be interested to study more and become active in their learning progress due to it is practical to apply in their everyday life. Moreover, this book also encourages higher level of thinking by giving questions in “Application: Try this yourself”. Certainly, I agree to say this textbook could be used for several years from now, for at least until 5 years to go, since it contains the comprehensive explanation of current information and latest findings in psychology areas.

Finally, for the physical aspects evaluation, we found that the book size is quite big and heavy for students to carry or to use it. However, the advantage of the textbook is the font and style age is appropriate and the bindings, pages and cover are certainly durable. Based on its physical aspects which are interesting and attractive, we ought to say it will appeal to the students. Furthermore, the page layout is uncluttered and balanced. Besides, this textbook also provides appropriate use of illustrations, graphs in order to represents age, ethnicity, sex, physical or mental ability. For instance, when explaining the chapter of “Neuroscience and Biological Foundations”, the textbook presents the function and process of any biological system by using effective and clear illustrations and descriptions. Therefore, we might conclude that the textbook illustrations, graphs, tables, and charts are really relevant and functional accordingly in assisting students’ understanding towards the subject.