Presentation issue 6º

We present in this issue a topic of always, but at the present time is most topical because they are immersed, again, in a curricular change, as it is projected and demanded by the Organic Law of Education. The didactic materials advance with the times: they improve their quality, presentation, format and content. These advances should have a positive impact on teaching, providing better support to teachers in their work, but without materials and texts should never become directors of educational processes, content and timing of the teaching that teachers should impart, or supplant the leading role of these in making decisions in the classroom.

The inspectors of education, in the visits to the centers that must realize in fulfillment of the functions that the normative assigns to them, they verify often the enormous weight that the materials and books of text have in the teaching practice of the teaching staff. With regard to textbooks -the most important of curricular materials-, teachers tend to consider that the decisions contained in their proposals, both content and activities, are axioms that should not be subjected to criticism; on the contrary: the teacher finds in them security and guarantee of good professional work.

The materials and texts should be a support to the teaching work. When the teacher prepares a class, he must pay special attention to the materials and resources he will use, because they will encourage the student to acquire the new knowledge, they will specify the contents and they will be an aid to understand what we want. expose him Sometimes, however, the texts place some fundamental aspects of teaching outside the scope of the faculty decision, and could lead to a certain loss of teacher autonomy, which would make team work irrelevant and unnecessary. In short, and in the words of Dr. López Hernández, can lead to the loss of professional autonomy.

On the other hand, Felipe Díaz Pardo proposes that, without undermining the value of textbooks, it is advisable to carry out a profound reflection on the subject that includes aspects such as the rise of new technologies, the appearance of new contents in the curriculum and the situation current characterized by the diversity of needs and interests of students.

Puelles Benítez, meanwhile, considers the manuals as a work tool of didactic nature, cultural object fruit of conceptions of very different sign, commercial product linked to the publishing world and a means of transmission of values, an aspect to which politics never has shown others or indifferent

In a magnificent work, Miguel Somoza raises the objectives of the MANES Project, the construction of its vast data base, today constituted by a large pool of Spanish, European and Latin American manuals, its virtual library and different sections, research and documentation activities developed, the publications appeared under its protection and its possibilities of interconnection between Spanish universities and the rest of the world.

In turn, Ana Mª Badanelli Rubio and Kira Mahamud Angulo tell us in their article that school notebooks emerge as rich, diverse, valid and necessary documentary sources to expand and complete the studies enrolled in three research fields that cross paths, as they are the history of childhood, the history of education and written culture.

In a similar vein, Professor García Encabo points out that, over the last decades, curricular materials have constituted a splendid reference to follow more or less linearly the avatars of Spanish educational systems and reflect on the relationship between different theoretical forms proposed from the didactic, and incorporated in some measure to the educational legislation, and the reality lived in the educational centers.

The LOE, fourth additional provision, establishes that the adoption of textbooks and other materials will not require prior authorization from the Educational Administration. In any case, these must adapt to the scientific rigor appropriate to the ages of the students and to the curriculum approved by each Autonomous Community.

The supervision of textbooks and other curricular materials will be part of the ordinary inspection process carried out by the Educational Administration on all the elements that make up the teaching-learning process.

The Editorial Board.