Textbook; Medium; Transmediality; Hybridization; Remix culture

The rise of digital media questioned traditional definitions of the textbook construct. The chapter aims to explore the options that contemporary findings from the field of media studies offer to understand the substance of a textbook, and, concurrently, to illuminate the concept of a textbook from the perspective of educational science. The main questions addressed are how a textbook operates as a medium at present, what its unique and typical features are, and if the change in technologies also means the change in medium i.e., if educational texts in digital form can be regarded as textbooks. First, typical features of current media–transmediality, hybridization, and remix culture–are described in how they manifest themselves in textbooks and other learning resources. Second, with the help of the affordance concept, the primary quality of the textbook is explained and argued that the concept of the textbook as a medium goes beyond material carriers, symbolic systems, or techniques of distribution. Third, in the quest to capture the substance of the textbook as a medium, Lorenz Engell’ theory of three media layers was applied. The detailed analysis based on the object layer, dispositif layer, and symbolic form showed, among others, that a textbook as a medium could exist in a printed, digital, or hybrid form and that its substance stays the same regardless of the technology.