2009 Revised Science curriculum helps all the students understand the meaning, value and role of Modern science through a full-fledged multidisciplinary approach, overcoming the limit of an excessive fragmented approach beyond the irrational division ...
2009 Revised Science curriculum helps all the students understand the meaning, value and role of Modern science through a full-fledged multidisciplinary approach, overcoming the limit of an excessive fragmented approach beyond the irrational division of liberal arts and natural sciences. At the same time, the 2009 Revised curriculum aims at fostering a rational person of talent with the high creativity and personality demanded by a future scientific technological society through a higher quality enrichment program. This revised curriculum has been phased in for the high schools since 2011.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the ratio of pages and frequency for inquiry activities per unit, the types of inquiry tasks, contents of inquiry activities, inquiry context and to checking how well the 2009 Revised curriculum's characteristics and goals were reflected in the two qualified ‘Earth Science Ⅰ’ textbooks which were written based on 2009 revised curriculum.
To achieve the above goals, the following subjects for inquiry were set up.
First, how many inquiry activities were placed per unit on the 2009 revised science curriculum, ‘Earth ScienceⅠ’?
Second, what results are expected when all the types of inquiry tasks were analyzed according to the SIEI(Science Inquiry Evaluation Indicator) table on the 2009 revised science curriculum, ‘Earth ScienceⅠ’?
Third, what are the contents of inquiry activities per unit on the 2009 revised science curriculum, ‘Earth ScienceⅠ’?
Fourth, what are the inquiry contexts of the 2009 revised science curriculum, ‘Earth ScienceⅠ’?
The gist of the study result is as follows.
First, according to the analyzed result of the pages of inquiry activity and the number of inquiry activities, both textbook A and B gave more weight to unit Ⅰ, ‘Precious Earth’, using more pages compared to other units. On the quantitative analysis of inquiry activity, both textbook A and B used the most inquiry activities numbers on Unit Ⅳ, ‘Approaching Universe’, adequately assigning the least number of inquiry activities for Unit Ⅲ, ‘Earth in danger’.
Second, when all the types of inquiry tasks were analyzed according to the SIEI(Scientific Inquiry Evaluation Inventory) table, both textbook A and B used the most inquiry activity portion on explanation and analysis, distributing relatively less portion of inquiry activity to synthesis materials and evaluation, setting up hypothesis and experiment design. Consequently, all the text books are required to be improved in order to be composed by adequately relating various inquiry processes to the subject learning contents.
Third, 2009 revised science curriculum, 'Earth ScienceⅠ' textbook includes total 47 areal detailed contents over all the lessons, and textbook B suggests more inquiry activity with 34 inquiry activities of textbook A and 42 inquiry activities of textbook B. 2009 revised science curriculum, 'Earth ScienceⅠ' textbook presents total 24 areal inquiry activity examples, and textbook A included more inquiry activity examples than textbook B with 21 examples of textbook A and 17 examples of textbook B.
Fourth, the analysis result of the inquiry contexts based on the NAEP(National Assessment of Educational Progress) score card revealed that both textbook A and B failed to reflect the STS(Science․Technology․Society) Education objectives since they lean too much on scientific conditions compared to the frequency of social conditions and technological conditions among the inquiry context areas. Textbooks need to be improved for the students to be able to relate the concept of Earth Science with the personal experience of daily life when inquiry activity is presented in the textbook considering the close relationship of science, technology and society and the importance of their interaction.