A Comparative Study On The Learning Difficulty Of Two New Versions Of High School Chemistry Textbook

The centre of the education reform is the reform of textbooks.The new editions of the chemistry textbooks,revised according to Chemistry Curriculum Standard for General High Schools(2017Edition),are gradually coming to widespread use in the whole country.This is bound to bring the new curriculum reform to a new height,and also to a large extent affects the teaching of teachers and learning of students.Therefore,under the situation of "one curriculum standard vs many versions of textbooks",it is of great practical significance to study the characteristics and shortcomings of each new edition of chemistry textbooks from different points of view in order to understand the textbooks,improve the teaching strategies and improve the learning efficiency of students.This research studies the theme of "Common Inorganic Substances and Their Applications" and its related contents.It makes a comparative study on the text content,text organization and text representation of the two most popular new editions of chemistry textbooks,which are published by the People Education Press and by the Shandong Science and Technology Press,separately,by using the "Evaluation Instrument of Chemistry Textbook Learning Difficulty" developed by Dr.Chen Yan.The results show that the main differences between the two editions of textbooks are as follows:(1)In terms of the content the textbooks cover,the textbook published by the People Education Press is more comprehensive,while the textbook published by the Shandong Science and Technology Press sets higher requirements for experimental inquiry.(2)In terms of text organization,the textbook published by the People Education Press has better knowledge coherence,while the textbook published by the Shandong Science and Technology Press features more instructive goals.(3)In terms of text representation,the language of the textbook published by the People Education Press is more user-friendly,and there is some expression vagueness in both editions of textbooks.The comparative study of the two editions of textbooks shows that the difficulty of the textbook published by the Shandong Science and Technology Press is higher than that of the textbook published by the People Education Press in many dimensions and degrees.Therefore,the content of the textbook published by the Shandong Science and Technology Press is more difficult than the textbook published by the People Education Press in the content of "Common Inorganic Substances and Their Applications".