Methodological? Or Dialectical?: Reflections of Scientific Inquiry in Biology Textbooks
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Methodological? Or Dialectical?: Reflections of Scientific Inquiry in Biology Textbooks Ozgur Kivilcan Dogan 1 Received: 13 February 2020 / Accepted: 10 August 2020/ # Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan 2020
Abstract Given the importance of cultivating scientific literate societies, the integration of scientific inquiry into school curriculum is key to contemporary science education. It is apparent that textbooks have been an accessible source of science information for teachers and students since the growth of public K-12 schooling worldwide. Textbooks are crucial for understanding the basis of science curriculum, since many science teachers design their courses according to textbook content. This study aimed to determine whether the activities (both experiments and student activities) in Turkish biology textbooks reflect contemporary inquiry-based approaches. To this end, the sample of the study was composed of four biology textbooks approved by the Turkish Ministry of National Education (MoNE) for grades 9–12. Analysis of these textbooks was conducted using the Inquiry-Based Tasks Analysis Inventory (ITAI). The overall findings indicate that activities in textbooks were mostly compatible with the established curriculum, but they were insufficiently designed to prepare students to do inquiry or to understand what scientific inquiry is. Results demonstrated that these textbooks’ most considered ITAI dimension was Construction of Understandings about Scientific Concepts, while the least frequently explored dimension was Understandings about Scientific Inquiry. Additionally, in the Expected skills dimension, observing and inferring were the most frequently used skills. Keywords Scientific inquiry . Biology education . Textbooks . ITAI
Introduction Scientifically literate individuals are essential to creating democratic societies. It is assumed that every individual who has an active part in such a society should be able to
* Ozgur Kivilcan Dogan [email protected]
1
Department of Biology Education Faculty of Education, Marmara University Goztepe, 34722 Istanbul, Turkey
O. K. Dogan
participate actively in many national decisions, including those related to scientific policy and development (Hurd, 1998). Given the importance of creating scientifically literate citizens, science education documents (see American Association for the Advancement of Science [AAAS], 1993; National Research Council [NRC], 1996, 2000) highlight the importance of integrating of scientific inquiry (SI) and nature of science (NOS) in school science curriculum to enhance the crucial cognitive (e.g., selecting, organizing, and utilizing science knowledge) and metacognitive (e.g., reflection, scientific reasoning) skills necessary to achieve scientific literacy. Understanding the nature and processes of science are vital to the contemporary sense of science education (Gaigher, Lederman & Lederman, 2014). Delineating the Relationship Between SI and NOS SI and NOS are often used as synonymous concepts by researchers due to their n
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