Applying Illustrations and Layout Design for Textbook to Enhance the Art of Teaching: A Case of Social Studies Textbook

Textbooks, an essential teaching and learning resource for secondary and elementary schools, help to shape tomorrow’s citizens. The textbooks incorporating both aesthetic features and functional purposes can be used to not only trigger the art of teaching but also conduct a better learning experience. First, this study illustrates the four major significances of the art of teaching of E. W. Eisner. Referring to these four significances and other literature, second, this study proposes five ways to use textbook design to initiate the art of teaching. They are 1) using art to deepen students’ perception ability, 2) employing various symbolic systems to develop students’ multiple intelligence, 3) utilizing aesthetic distance to develop students’ imagination and creativity, 4) using manipulative design to encourage joy and surprise from learning, and 5) using multi–layered, multi–dimensional and blank spaces to provoke emergent ends. Third, this study attempts to integrate the principles of illustration and layout design into textbook design. By employing these principles appropriately, we hope, textbooks become the objects which can promote students’ learning motivation and aesthetic experiences. Finally, referring to the methods proposed to encourage the art of teaching and principles in illustration and layout design, this study examines US and Japanese textbooks to provide positive examples which can make the art of teaching more fascinating.