Comparative Research On Learning Difficulities Of Science (Biology) Textbooks For Junior Middle School Among China,USA And Britain

Teaching materials is the capital construction of modern school education, which directly affects the quality and efficiency of school education. Since1960s, science curriculum began to develop rapidly in the United States and then spread to the entire world. Our country began to experiment in Zhejiang province during1990s, there emerged an integrated junior middle school science textbook,which coexist with the traditional divided biology, physics, chemistry, geography textbooks. With the development of the times, biology curriculum integrated into the science curriculum has become an international trend. In2001, the Ministry of Education has developed the "Compulsory Education Science (7-9) grades curriculum standards, which accelerates the development of domestic science curriculum. But how to take advantage of science integrated textbooks, optimize biology contents and raising the scientific capacities of secondary school students is worth pondering.In this context, by comparing the representative science (biology) textbooks of junior middle school of China,USA and Britain, this study aims to ascertain the position and gaps of the science textbook of Zhejiang edition, and put forward strategies and forward thinking fit for China biology textbook reforming, provide the scientific decision-making with the latest reference, thus further improve Chinese compulsory education biology curriculum system and teaching materials construction.In this research, three set of science(biology) textbooks are selected, Science (Britain)","Science Explorer"(USA), and "Science" published by Zhejiang education press. This research breaks the limitations of qualitative analysis of most similar studies at home and abroad which rely on experienced level, and constructs the learning difficulty model of textbook comparison and junior middle school biology model of eight themes, then quantitative compares the three dimensions of the difficulties of learning objectives, content structure and subject characteristics. Also literature analysis, comparing test, statistic law and the questionnaires survey are adopted to combine the quantitative and qualitative methods, to objectively evaluate each textbook.Comparative studies shows:in difficulty of learning objectives, three sets of textbooks is similar on the level of knowledge, while on the breadth of knowledge, as the American edition covers a wide range of knowledge, it shows the highest score. In content structure and subject characteristics difficulty, they show significantly differences. In content structure difficulty, because the differences of arrangements between grades, American shows the highest level order. In subject characteristics difficulty, three sets show significantly differences, mainly in the aspects of abstraction, induction and exploration. In the aspect of abstraction, three textbooks owns different features in the way of developing knowledge, Zhejiang edition attaches importance to lower the abstraction by setting experiments and images, but still shows gaps with international standards as America and Britain. In the aspect of induction, the Anglo-American version are not only elaborate, but also lively and varied in forms, the "objective guidance" and "process guidance" of Zhejiang edition still needs improvement. As for exploration, the Zhejiang edition has paid great attention to cultivate the students with scientific inquiry abilities, and sets a certain amount of research experimental activities, but still show slightly shortage on the novelty of the title, the feasibility of the contents as well as the guidance of the exploring procedure.The questionnaire survey of Zhejiang edition shows:the aspects, such as the content system, ideological and cultural infiltration, the use of cognitive rules, the cultivation of student ability of the textbook are more approved by the teachers, while, as for the aspects of the design of the activity columns and the feasibility of teaching, such as "the arrangement of the content is conducive to the progress of teaching,""the arranged activities are carried out smoothly," and so on still needs further improved. The students highly approved the part of the language and illustration, the exercise setting and capacity-building, but shows low acceptance on the aspects such as the design of the activity columns and experiment.Therefore, by affirming the biology part of "science" textbook of Zhejiang edition, the study put forward several reference suggestions to further improving Zhejiang edition:mainly in eight areas, namely:1) select intellectual content;2) increase the guidance of teaching;3) appropriate reduce the abstraction of the textbook;4) optimize the set of exploration activities;5) enhance the feasibility of biological experiments;6) enrich the style of the exercises;7) increase interdisciplinary content;8) pay attention to the internal logicality and relevance of the textbook.