The Symbol Precedence View of Mathematical Development: A Corpus Analysis of the Rhetorical Structure of Textbooks

This study examined a corpus of 10 widely used prealgebra and algebra textbooks, with the goal of investigating whether they exhibited a symbol precedence view of mathematical development as is found among high school teachers. The textbook analysis focused on the sequence in which problem-solving activities were presented to students. As predicted, textbooks showed the symbol precedence view, presenting symbolic problems prior to verbal problems. Algebra textbooks showed this pattern more strongly than prealgebra textbooks aimed at middle school, paralleling grade-level differences found among teachers. Finally, textbooks published after 1990 contained far fewer symbol-only sections, as expected from recent mathematics education reform documents. We interpret these findings in light of research on learning from texts and on the role of textbooks in shaping teachers’ instructional practices and students’ learning.