On application of multi-criteria decision making with ordinal information in elementary education

In the Czech Republic each elementary or secondary school decides which textbook will be used for a given class and a given subject of education. As a supply of textbooks is wide, a selection of the most suitable textbook by a teacher is a typical case of multi-criteria decision making situation where an evaluation of different textbooks on selected criteria is rather ordinal in nature than cardinal: it is not possible to assign textbooks some numerical value with regard to criteria such as content, comprehensibility, adequacy to children’s age and knowledge, etc. (with the exception of textbook’s price), but textbooks can be ranked from the best to the worst by such criteria, and the best textbook can be found by a new and simple mathematical method developed for this purpose in this paper. The aim of the paper is to show how this multi-criteria decision making method with ordinal information can be used for the selection of the most appropriate textbook for elementary science education, because a right choice of a textbook plays an important role in children’s education. And we shall not forget that decisions made today influence the world tomorrow, and the World of Tomorrow is also a World of Our (well-educated) Children.