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Writing Church‐sponsored Religious Education Textbooks

This paper reports on and analyses some aspects of the development by the Catholic Archdiocese in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia of a series of religious education textbooks to be used in all Catholic schools in the Archdiocese. It surveys research and literature on textbooks in the contemporary classroom to show that they are still used as key tools in teaching and learning. The author then analyses some local issues that were in the background to the decision to produce textbooks, explains and justifies the choice of content for the middle secondary books, which are intended for use by 14 and 15 year olds, and discusses three themes from the literature which have affected the presentation of the books. Finally, a brief indication of an ongoing evaluation plan is presented. Because this project is very new ‐ the first books have only been used for one year and later levels are still being written ‐ the purpose of this paper is largely descriptive, and historical in that it sets the development of the series in a particular context. When evidence from evaluation of the impact of the series is available, it will be the subject of more analytical papers