Pedagogical Aids in Textbooks: Do College Students' Perceptions Justify Their Prevalence?

Abstract

Our study extends, Weiten, Guadagno, and Beck's (1996) research on the value of the pedagogical aids in introductory psychology textbooks. We asked 411 first-semester and advanced psychology students to rate each of 15 aids on familiarity, likelihood of use, and value. We also examined all full-length introductory psychology texts published between 1995 and 1997 to determine the prevalence of these aids. Although the 2 student groups generally agreed on the most and least useful aids, ratings did not consistently coincide with prevalence. We discuss how ratings may reflect students' concern with test preparation and call for empirical re-search on the relation between pedagogical aids and learning.