The International Comparative Research On Chemistry And Society Content Integration Of Textbooks

Chemistry and society content is important in the junior middle school chemistry (or science) textbooks. Learning this content will help students to understand the relationship among science, technology and society, and improve students’ scientific literacy. This research chooses the Chinese, English and Australian chemistry (or science) textbooks as the study objects, which are using in the junior middle school, comparing these three textbooks from the two aspects of themes and presentation characteristics of content integration by mainly adopting research methods of literature analysis, mathematical statistics and case analysis. After analyzing the knowledge points, the way of situation creation and knowledge construction as well as several content presentation ways, and deeply comparing students’participation in the sections and exercises of textbooks, the study shows some results as following:On the themes of content integration, Chinese textbook integrates most widely and embodies the idea of centering on chemistry discipline during the process. The least scope of the integration among these three textbooks is English textbook, its consolidation process mainly considers the social value of chemistry and pays more attention to the setting of the life situation. While the content integration of Australian textbook mostly revolves around the global problems and focuses on the introduction of scientific concepts and principles.On the presentation characteristics of content integration, Chinese textbook presents a very simple and intuitive chapter introduction, and pays more attention to the application of experimental records. While its practical exercises don’t give detailed requirements and students’participation in columns and exercises is low. English textbook focuses on the presentation of concept cartoons, and the setting of columns consider more about the characteristics of discipline integration, but students’ participation in columns and exercises is also low. While Australian textbook focuses on the use of model and summative pictures, its experimental activities have detailed steps and strongly emphasize on explorative ability, its practical exercises present clear demands and flexible options. What’s more, Australian textbook affords more students’participations in the columns and exercises.