Representations of Nature of Science in New Korean Science Textbooks: The Case of ‘Scientific Inquiry and Experimentation’

Abstract

Nature of science (NOS) is becoming a core component of both science education research and curriculum policy around the globe. In particular, how textbooks should portray NOS aspects have been of keen interest to science educators. This chapter outlines the background and motivations for Korea's new compulsory subject, scientific inquiry and experimentation (SIE), and analyses how textbooks for this subject present NOS aspects using historical episodes. The aim is to help textbook authors and policymakers by examining the opportunities and challenges of Korea's new NOS curricular initiative. The results indicate that textbooks tend to focus on the cognitive and epistemic characteristics of science, with limited representation of social and institutional NOS aspects. While textbooks often included multiple NOS aspects that underlie each historical episode, in most cases these aspects were implicitly addressed without proper cues for students' reflection about them. Based on these findings, we discuss implications for textbook authors and science teachers.

A Study on Demonstration of the Nature of Science in Science Textbooks: History and Philosophy of Science Perspectives

“…Numerous studies (Niaz, 1998;Rodriguez & Niaz, 2004;Niaz & Coştu, 2009, McDonald & Abd-El-Khalick,2017Yang et al, 2020) revealed the importance of content presentation. Their common conclusion was that there seems no effort to prepare science textbooks in science teacher education programs to improve prospective teachers' understanding of the NOS.…”

“…A recent study conducted by Yang et al (2020) focused on how NOS is represented and demonstrated by the science textbooks used in Korean schools. Their analysis framework is Erduran & Dagher's (2014) RFN view which is a re-conceptualized form of Irzik & Nola's (2011) FRA view.…”

“…We attempt to create textbook content that can implicitly demonstrate aspects of NOS. Yang et al (2020) stated implicitly that representation of NOS can be "an important means of contextualizing NOS by linking the individual's scientific knowledge" with the dynamics of human society surrounding the science.…”

“…Osborne et al (2003) pointed out the importance of including NOS into science curricula and suggested the need for consensus on determining the components of NOS to integrate into science curricula. Thus, NOS is becoming a core component of both science education research and curriculum policy around the globe (Yang et al, 2020).…”

“…Science textbooks are seen as influential teaching resources which have a substantial role in the science classroom and so it should help students develop informed conceptions of NOS because "it is most likely that the values and assumptions embedded or explicated in the language of the textbook, and its associated images, will influence students' views about the nature of the science" (McDonald & Abd-El-Khalick, 2017). Furthermore, Yang et al (2020) and McDonald (2017) stated that "how science textbooks should portray NOS aspects have been a keen interest to science educators. "…”