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Do middle school life science textbooks provide a balance of scientific literacy themes?
Author(s) -
Chiappetta Eugene L.,
Sethna Godrej H.,
Fillman David A.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of research in science teaching
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.067
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1098-2736
pISSN - 0022-4308
DOI - 10.1002/tea.3660300714
Subject(s) - scientific literacy , science education , science, technology, society and environment education , nature of science , balance (ability) , mathematics education , sociology of scientific knowledge , outline of social science , literacy , social science education , science communication , psychology , sociology , pedagogy , social science , neuroscience
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.