Comparative Study On Difficulty Of Middle School Science Textbook Between China, America And Australia

The textbook reform is the core part of a new turn of curriculum reform of basic education. One of the most important things we need to take into consideration when reforming and revising the textbook is the understanding difficulty. The thesis compares the biology contents of four versions of Science Textbook in Junior High School among China, the United States, and Australia by means of quantitative methods, so as to figure out each level of comprehension difficulty.The thesis consists of four parts. The first part is introduction, mainly introducing the background, significance, current situation of the research, as well as the methods used; in the second part, the respective background of science education in China, the United-States and Australia is analyzed. And-it tries to find out the differences of science education and science curriculum among them.Besides, there are simple introduction of the selected textbooks in each country. In the third part, it makes a study on the understanding difficulty of biology contents of Science Textbook in Junior High School, which are American ?scientific explorer?? Australian?Science Focus?? China's wuhan version?Science? and China's zhejiang version ?Science?, by the method of textbook difficulty analysis. In this part, it compares quantitatively and analyses from two dimensions of knowledge, the breadth and depth in five themes. In the forth part, the difference of breadth and difficulty level of those four materials are analyzed and summarized. Then some useful suggestions of improving our science textbook on the part of biological characteristics are raised, based on the analysis of foreign science textbook's style.Finally, we summed up the problem and deficiency of the study.