No abstract

Science textbooks are frequently used to convey a great deal of the information that students receive in science courses. They influence how science teachers organize the curriculum and how students perceive the scientific enterprise. An overreliance on these teaching aids often results in an overemphasis on terminology and vocabulary, and presents a false impression of the nature of science. As a result of their importance, a method was developed to assess the curricular emphasis in science textbooks. The procedure is explained in a 25‐page manual to train researchers to determine the relative emphasis that has been given to (a) science as a body of knowledge, (b) science as a way of investigating, (c) science as a way of thinking, and (d) the interaction among science, technology, and society. Textbooks in the areas of life science, earth science, physical science, biology, and chemistry were used in the analyses. Interrater agreements of at least 80% and kappas of at least 0.73 were achieved in the content analyses among two experienced researchers and one science teacher who were given the training manual to learn the assessment procedure.

Four themes of scientific literacy have been synthesized to analyze science textbooks for this purpose: (a) science as a body of knowledge, (b) science as a way of investigating, (c) science as a way of thinking, and (d) the interaction among science, technology, and society (STS). The intercoder agreement between two researchers who coded the units of analysis for the four themes was high. The life science textbooks examined in this study seem to stress two aspects of scientific literacy—science as a body of knowledge and science as a way of investigating. These textbooks devote practically no text to science as a way of thinking. Very little text is devoted to the interaction of science, technology, and society. There was at least one chapter in each textbook that addressed the nature of science and its relationship to life science. Most of the analyzed textbooks present the stereotypical steps of the scientific method and do not provide a balance of scientific literacy themes.

The purpose of this study was to examine the content of seven high school chemistry textbooks for curriculum balance and emphasis on the following aspects of scientific literacy: (a) science as a body of knowledge, (b) science as a way of investigating, (c) science as a way of thinking, and (d) the interaction among science, technology, and society. In addition, the number of textbook pages, vocabulary terms, pictures, questions, and problems at the end of the chapter were determined. The textbook is an important teaching aid in high school chemistry courses, which conveys some of the information that students receive and influences how students perceive this subject. The majority of chemistry textbooks we analyzed stress science as a body of knowledge, place some emphasis on science as a way of investigating, have practically eliminated science as a way of thinking, and devote very little text to the interaction among science, technology, and society. Furthermore, these are voluminous books that range in length from 466 to 729 pages, with as many as 60 questions per chapter.

No abstract