Publishing culture of school textbook: editorial and design aspects.

The article deals with the main aspects of publishing culture which are considered on the example of school textbooks selection from recent years, including first grade textbooks published within so-called «New Ukrainian School» programme. The pub­lishing culture concept which consists of content, form and data medium of the published product is the central idea in our research. The particular emphasis is made on the editorial and design aspects of the publishing culture.

Most of the analysed textbooks made through a competition, were reviewed by experts chosen by the Institute of Education Content Modernization, and yet they were not without flaws. The most important issues in this school textbooks selection are highlighted in the article. The following items among them are: the selection of educational material (texts, illustrations) and its presentation, the approach to the cultural code creating, explaining of words and concepts meaning, creating fictional characters for methodical purposes, the adherence to the principles of gender equality and inclusion, the development of a symbolic system for marking different tasks and exercises, matching text and illustrations, creating the visual layout of the page, etc.

Occasionally textbook authors include several fictional characters into the book in order to make it more interactive. Some of these characters do not have any distinctive features and are absolutely useless. It is very difficult for pupils to memorise their names and function, thus failing their methodical purposes completely.

Some exercises refer to literary and music pieces, movies and cartoons created in the 60–80s during Soviet times and mostly in Russian. This is showing the undesirable influence that foreign culture of the past has on the authors and therefore on the pupils.

The visual layouts of textbook pages are often replete with unnecessary decorative elements and lack white space and simplicity.

In general, the school textbooks selection expresses need for unification, consistent approach and more clear design solutions. Each of these issues have possible ways of publishing optimization, some of them are suggested in the article. The main aim is to make the school textbooks within the «New Ukrainian School» methodologically effective and attractive for the readers.

Keywords: school textbook, publishing culture, publishing product optimization, editorial aspects, design aspects.

doi: 10.32403/0554-4866-2019-2-78-63-76