A study on the analysis and use of life sciences textbooks for the nature of science

M.Ed. (Science Education)The South African current school curriculum, namely the National Curriculum Statement, is underpinned by outcomes-based education. The subject Biology (in the Nated 550 curriculum) has been changed to “Life Sciences” and the learning outcomes for Life Sciences are representative of the four themes of the Nature of Science (NOS), namely, science as a body of knowledge, science as a way of investigating, science as a way of thinking, and the interaction of science technology and society. The many changes made from the previous curriculum that accompanied the new curriculum left many teachers reliant on textbooks to plan, guide and inform their teaching and learning activities in the classroom. My study is concerned with the representation of the NOS in Grade 10 South African Life Sciences classrooms. I have conducted my study in two phases. The purpose of Phase One was to analyse three Grade 10 Biology textbooks and three Grade 10 Life Sciences textbooks for the representation of the NOS. A qualitative content analysis methodology was used in the analysis of textbooks, and my study adopted a textbook analytical tool designed by Chiappetta, Sethna and Fillman (2004), using the four broad NOS themes of the mentioned above. The purpose of Phase Two of the study was to observe how teachers use Life Sciences textbooks in their teaching in order to infuse the NOS. A qualitative interpretive case study was the selected methodology for this part of the study. Three practicing Life Sciences teacher-participants were invited to an in-depth interview and a lesson observation each. The lesson observations and the interviews were audio-taped and transcribed. The open-coding method was used where the predetermined codes of the NOS were assigned to extracts of the transcriptions. Qualitative data analysis techniques based on the principles of Framework Analysis (Ritchi & Spencer, 1984) were used in Phase One and Phase Two of my study. There are five steps in Framework analysis, namely, (i) familiarization, (ii) identification of a thematic framework, (iii) indexing (open-coding method), (iv) charting, and (v) mapping and interpretation