How energy is conceptualized in the primary science textbooks from China and Finland

• In Event: Education for Sustainable Development

Proposal

In this study, selected Chinese and Finnish science textbooks from Grade 3 to Grade 6 were examined in terms of their ways of conceptualizing and organizing content for the teaching and learning of “energy”.
Introduction
Textbooks are the bridge between intended curricula and implemented curricula, which is one of the data sources to investigate possible reasons for the assessment results in addition to national curricula (Goodlad, Klein, & Tye, 1979; Schmidt et al., 1996). The quality of textbooks can influence the quality of teaching and learning (Stern & Roseman, 2004). Since textbooks are a basic source that guides teachers as they plan their lessons, the analysis of textbooks can provide insights into reasons for differences in student achievement across different educational systems. Thus, this research compared primary science textbooks from Finland and China should provide possible reasons for the success of students’ science achievement in two different educational cultures.
The Finnish and Chinese national primary science curricula, which have been published during the last ten years, are emphasising core ideas and the use of knowledge in different situations or contexts instead of introducing a large number of topics and have extended the range of aims and integrated transversal competences as a part of science-related aims (Authors,**). These changes have been emphasised in policy documents in various countries and organisations (OECD or some other transversal competence description, e.g., Binkley et al., 2012) and in recent science education research, for example, research on scientific literacy (Levinson, 2010; Yacoubian, 2018), understanding the nature of science (Authors, **; Erduran & Dagher, 2014; Lederman & Lederman, 2019), inquiry-based science education (Abd-El-Khalick et al., 2004; Krajcik & Czerniak, 2018; Lederman et al., 2019), contextualization of teaching and learning science (Hodson, 2011; Authors, 2009; OECD, 2018), socio-scientific issues (Morris, 2014; Sadler & Zeidler, 2009; Zeidler & Nichols, 2009) and crosscutting ideas (NGSS, 2013).
A focus on Energy should provide an interesting opportunity for us to understand possible approaches taken in organizing content for teaching and learning in different textbooks across countries. The topic of energy is one of the ideal topics to improve students’ scientific literacy, a topic combining the social world with the scientific world ( Dewaters, Qaqish, Graham, & Powers, 2013; Solomon, 1992). Energy is a difficult content topic in school science not only for students but also for teachers. It has explanatory power or could be used for explaining phenomena through analysing the conservation of energy in the phenomena. Energy is a generative concept – i.e. it is a tool supportive for understanding, used while investigating complex ideas and solving problems. The energy concept is relevant in personal, local (society) and global contexts.
Thus, the topic of energy can afford different approaches in representation and various depths in content treatment, which can subsequently affect students’ learning experiences and outcomes for scientific literacy.
Methods
With the topic selection of energy, analytical frameworks are developed in this study to provide a systematic fine-grained analysis of textbooks. To examine how textbooks conceptualize and structure energy concepts for teaching and learning, we analysed the selected pages as included and presented in textbooks at both macro and micro levels. The selected presentations of the blocks from the textbooks were analysed based on a qualitative content analysis following Weber (1990), Mayring (2015), and Schwarz (2015) according to the analytical frameworks. After the coding process, we calculated the observed frequencies and percentages for each category and code.
Results
1. How energy concepts structured in different textbooks
Both the Finnish and Chinese textbooks introduce the energy concept across different grades and introduce energy as independent units at higher grades (the fifth and sixth grades). The Finnish textbooks used more percentage of pages in combining the energy concept with other content than the Chinese. The sequence and structure of introducing the energy concept vary in the Finnish and Chinese textbooks.
2. How energy concepts presented in different textbooks
The differences between the Chinese and Finnish textbooks regarding the distribution of presentation types are statistically significant. The analyses revealed that the Finnish textbooks use more narrative than the Chinese. The Chinese textbooks prefer using Graphic to the Finnish textbooks.
There is a statistically significant difference between the Finnish and Chinese textbooks regarding the distribution of context topics usage. The Finnish textbooks show a higher total number of contexts of learning than the Chinese. This implies that the Finnish textbooks situate content knowledge with real life more than the Chinese ones.
The personal level received the most emphasis in both the Chinese and the Finnish textbooks. The lab or experimental level is valued the second most in the Chinese textbooks, whereas the experimental level received the least emphasis in the Finnish textbooks. These imply that both textbooks are based on students’ experiences and seek to connect the teaching content to a concrete personal and local context. Moreover, the Chinese textbooks prefer discussing energy topics in the lab than the Finnish.
3 What are students expected to learn about energy from different textbooks?
The Finnish textbooks emphasized the competency of “explaining phenomena scientifically”, whereas the Chinese textbooks emphasized competencies related to the inquiry. Environmental awareness and actions are highlighted in both textbooks.

Author

• Yan Wang, Beijing Normal University