A Comparative Analysis of Text Difficulty in Slovak and Canadian Science Textbooks

Abstract

One of the main purposes of textbooks is the mediation of educational content to students. The factual accuracy of information, as well as the clarity of the text for students plays a crucial role in this aspect. The inadequate text difficulty can complicate students' learning. Comparing different approaches to the text in textbooks, considering the objectives of education, represents key knowledge for teaching materials innovation. This research was therefore focused on the comparison of the Slovak and Canadian science textbooks for lower secondary education. The methodology for assessing text difficulty according to Nestler, Prucha and Pluskal was used for this purpose. The samples of text from the textbooks for 6th and 8th grade of lower-secondary school were assessed. It was found that the text in Slovak textbooks is significantly more difficult. While from the syntactic difficulty point of view differences were rather partial, the significant differences were found in the semantic difficulty of the text. The Slovak textbooks are burdened with an excessive number of professional terms. Considering the results in measuring scientific literacy, this approach to the text in the Slovak textbooks is not effective. The results obtained are therefore an incentive to revise used educational materials.

A Comprehensive Framework for Comparing Textbooks: Insights from the Literature and Experts

“…However, since educational curriculums and textbooks differ from one country to another, it is difficult to reuse open textbooks in different contexts (and, by implication, countries) despite being open and free [28]. Therefore, analyzing and comparing textbooks across different countries could help to identify the similarities and differences of textbooks of those countries [29], which further contributes to designing universal open textbooks [30].…”

“…However, this indicator is not comprehensive enough to capture the coverage of textbooks because it neglects the varying textbook page indicator, such as page size [7]. Therefore, another indicator-word count-is introduced as a confirmation [30].…”