“Considerate” content area textbooks are “user-friendly”---they are relatively easy to read, understand, and learn from. Recent research in cognitive psychology and reading suggests some features of content area textbooks that contribute to considerateness. This article addresses three of these features: Structure, coherence, and audience appropriateness. For each feature, the article describes the research basis for the feature, states briefly some problems with textbooks that we have observed in our analyses, and presents some practical suggestions for evaluating textbooks.
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