c e p s Journal | V ol.12 | N o 2 | Y ear 2022 293 Eckhardt Fuchs and Annekatrin Bock (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies , Palgrave Macmillan, New Y ork: 2018; 432 pp.: ISBN: 978-1-137- 53141-4 Reviewed by Mark Jupiter Užmah 1 Textbooks and textbook-ori- ented studies are generally caught be - tween two areas of research: publish - ing and education. Printed textbooks have played a vital role in the Western education system, at least until the beginning of the twentieth century, having been deemed the main source of knowledge. As a consequence of educational textbook usage, children and young adults established regular reading habits, but the many social, cultural and technological cha(lle) nges of the last century mean that textbook use, content, format and production have changed significant - ly. The present essay collection offers a much-needed insight into the field of textbooks, which it also broadens with vital input from social studies and the humanities. The Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies consists of 30 essays, assem - bled and edited by two established researchers in the field, both affiliated with the Georg Eckert Institute for International T extbook Research (GEI) in Braun - schweig, Germany. Eckhardt Fuchs is a historian and has been the director of the Institute since 2015. His research interests lie in globalisation processes related to education, European education policy, the history of transnational education relationships, the global history of textbook revision and the history of teaching materials (GEI: Prof. Dr Eckhardt Fuchs, n.d.). Annekatrin Bock is head of the Media in Schools research team at the Institute and is best known 1 Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; mark.uzmah@gmail.com. reviews doi: 10.26529/cepsj.1481 294 for her research work in educational media and school and classroom, as well as in reception and appropriation in media and communication studies. Dr Bock’ s recent work focuses on digital transformation and the change in learning cul - ture (GEI: Dr Annekatrin Bock, n.d.). The 36 contributors to this volume come from various fields connected to textbook studies, including publishing, digital media, education, curriculum studies, history, geography, linguistics and discourse studies, social anthropology and sociology. The editors thus succeed in producing a diverse and comprehen - sive volume, shedding light on textbooks from a variety of angles and discussing the historical, methodological, political and other dilemmas in the field. As the editors explain in the Introduction , textbook studies are a sub - stantially diverse area of research that demands an exploration of the common ground between the chapters’ perspectives. They outline that “the conceptual focus revolves explicitly around textbook-related research questions informed by a cultural studies perspective” (p. 2) and further clarify that the field “centers on approaches from sociological and cultural studies, such as memory studies, sociology of knowledge, discourse theory, and media theory, alongside those drawn from the social and educational sciences” (ibid). The book is arranged in four main parts, opening with an insight into the history, theory and methods of textbook research (Part I, Chapters 2–4), before continuing with a focus on the context in which textbooks are produced (Part II, Chapters 5–12), textbook content (Part III, Chapters 13–26), and the use, effects and practices of textbooks (Part IV, Chapters 27–29). The editors characterise Parts II to IV as “production, product, and reception” (p. 3). The book is rounded out with a conclusion, Part V, which contains reflections on future directions. Due to the length and complexity of the Handbook, not all of the chapters can be discussed here. Instead, the content of the four sections will be outlined and the chapters considered important for the conceptual frame - work of this issue of the CEPS Journal will be described. Part I, entitled History, Theory, and Methods of Textbook Research, consists of three essays that focus on the origins and development of textbook studies through to the present. The first two chapters, History of the School Textbook by Steffen Sammler and History of T extbook Research by Eckhardt Fuchs and Kathrin Henne, are complementary in that they both discuss the transformation of school textbooks since the early modern period. Both pieces indicate the important con - ceptual turn that occurred in the last century when textbooks, initially considered books to be used in schools as well as in other situations, became an exclusively educational medium produced solely for school use. Additionally, technology has advanced considerably in the last decade, impacting both textbook usage in eckhardt fuchs and annekatrin bock (eds.), the palgrave handbook of textbook ... c e p s Journal | V ol.12 | N o 2 | Y ear 2022 295 schools as well as the field of textbook research. The third essay, Theories and Methods of Textbook Studies by Annekatrin Bock, accordingly turns the reader’s gaze to the methodological approaches to the multifaceted and manifold concept of textbook studies. Bock argues that the methodology of textbook research long had a reputation of being one-dimensional, focused solely on content analysis, but has expanded immensely in the last decade by using different approaches, such as narrative theory, interviews and computer-aided analysis. By outlining these numerous methods, both marginalised and established, the author paves the way for future research in the field. This first part of the Handbook could be seen as a prolonged introduction, since these three essays provide insight into the history, complexity and diversity of textbook research. Part II, entitled Textbooks in Their Context, comprises eight chapters covering an array of topics relating to the social context of textbooks, from their publishing and authorship to their role in the education system in general and in particular areas, namely, the social sciences and the humanities, as well as science and geography. This section also addresses textbook quality by stressing the importance of both criteria and evaluation. Although the educational per - spective is incorporated in the historically and methodologically engaged Part I, the connection between textbooks and education is even more apparent in Part II, which highlights the societal conditions around the production of text - books and the decisions over their substance, the knowledge included in them. In the chapter T extbooks and Education , Eugenia Roldán V era sheds light on the importance of social context in the process of textbook production, which is inherently connected to its content. T extbooks have changed considerably since the nineteenth century, when they played a crucial role in providing pupils with common representations of the past, thus building uniformity in the self-per - ception of nations. The atrocities of World Wars I and II triggered analysis and wider consideration of the role of education in the generation of conflict, and this had a considerable impact on textbook research and on understanding the role of textbooks in contemporary societies. Later developments brought ad - ditional challenges, such as the multiplication of knowledge sources and digi - talisation. The latter is discussed in Christoph Bläsi’ s Educational Publishers and Educational Publishing , in which specific features of textbook publishing across disciplines in several Western and developing countries are explored. The third part of the book, Textbooks and Their Contents , is the most extensive, containing 14 essays that build on the dynamics between context and content. As highlighted by the editors, Part III is intrinsically divided into three subsections, with the first focusing on national, transnational and re - gional identities, as well as on representations of class, race, gender and sexual 296 eckhardt fuchs and annekatrin bock (eds.), the palgrave handbook of textbook ... orientation in textbooks. The second set of chapters puts a spotlight on text - book representations of the historical and cultural issues of religion, national - ism and the Holocaust, colonialism, socialism and, more generally, dictatorship and war. Sylvie Guichard’s impactful War in Textbooks is cited in many of the Handbook’s other chapters because it demonstrates how fundamentally text - book content was affected by the two world wars. The third section in Part III deals with political and economic concepts, such as human rights education in Patricia Bromley and Julia Lerch’s Human Rights as Cultural Globalisation: The Rise of Human Rights in Textbooks, 1890–2013) and the climate crisis in Tobias Ide’s The Environment . Part IV, entitled Textbook Use, Effects, and Practices , centres on the us - age of textbooks by different users in both formal and informal education. As mentioned above, textbooks were originally just books used in schools and other places, but they gradually transformed into specifically educational materials or tools. As Thomas Illum Hansen explains in T extbook Use, this development led to textbooks being used by students as well as by teachers. Today, textbooks remain the most regularly used learning materials. As several other authors in this Hand - book note, Illum Hansen explores the emergence of digital textbooks and other digital teaching materials, referencing a systematic review of 16 open educational resource studies and concluding that there is little difference in the learning out - comes of digital and paper-based learning materials. Although students prefer printed textbooks to digital versions, they perceive their quality as comparable. The differences between reading (in general rather than specifically textbooks) on screens or on paper has been increasingly researched over the last several years, and meta-study findings suggest the opposite of Illum Hansen’s first argument and affirm the latter (Singer and Alexander, 2017; Delgado et al., 2018; Clinton, 2019). Reading on a screen differs from reading on paper; it is harder to read long- form informational text on a screen because we remember less and it is more ex - hausting than reading from paper (Stavanger Declaration 2019). This topic relates to digitalisation, but it is also very closely connected to the complexity of content in books and textbooks, which leaves room for future studies. The Handbook’s conclusion is called New Directions , or Part V, and is written by Barbara Cristophe, Annekatrin Bock, Eckhardt Fuchs, Felicitas Macgilchrist, Marcus Otto and Steffen Sammler. It outlines the key trends pre - sented in the Handbook and points out the central shortcomings of the field. The authors acknowledge the already significant broadening of the range of theoretical approaches to textbook studies, which has led to the area being “well enough grounded to make significant contributions to theoretical debate in several areas” (p. 414). Furthermore, they remark on the significant changes c e p s Journal | V ol.12 | N o 2 | Y ear 2022 297 in the perception of textbooks, which are now studied as complex media rather than simple transmitters. This closing chapter also underlines possible ideas for future research, such as expanding into geographical regions that have been ne - glected in certain respects and inventing methods for analysing different teach - ing materials, especially in relation to digital textbooks and open resources. The Palgrave Handbook of Textbook Studies sheds light on the develop - ment of textbook-related research, focuses on the importance of the social con - ditions in which textbooks are produced, and analyses the role of teaching with school textbooks in the process of achieving educational aims. It shows how the field of textbook studies has been established over time and how intercon - nected it is not only with education studies, but also with many disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities. The collection identifies many pressing questions relating to textbook studies, some of which are briefly outlined above, and leaves room for further reflection and analysis. For example, the severe reductions and changes in what students learn at school over the last few dec - ades has become a burning issue, impacting how and to what extent we access the social stock of knowledge. It has also severely affected textbook production and usage. Whether future research focuses on historical or methodological perspectives or on another area of textbook studies, this Handbook provides a comprehensive review of existing theory and research and is therefore a vital contribution to a field that has had troubles in the past, but has recently laid its scholarly foundations. References Clinton, V . (2019). Reading from paper compared to screens: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Research in Reading, 42, 288–325. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12269 Delgado, P ., Vargas, C., Ackerman, R., & Salmerón, L. (2018). Don’t throw away your printed books: A meta-analysis on the effects of reading media on comprehension. Educational Research Review, 25, 23–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2018.09.003 GEI: Dr. Annekatrin Bock. (n.d.). http://www.gei.de/en/mitarbeiter/dr-annekatrin-bock.html GEI: Prof. Dr. Eckhardt Fuchs. (n.d.). http://www.gei.de/en/mitarbeiter/prof-dr-eckhardt-fuchs.html Singer, L. M., & Alexander, P . A. (2017). Reading on paper and digitally: What the past decades of empirical research reveal. Review of Educational Research, 87 (6), 1007–1041. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654317722961 Stavanger Declaration. (2019). https://ereadcost.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/StavangerDeclaration.pdf