The Representation of Nature of Science (NOS) in Grade 6 French, American, and Lebanese Science Textbooks Used in Lebanon

Abstract

Textbooks are heavily relied upon as a main resource for teaching. The Nature of Science (NOS), now part of many newly developed curricula, is considered essential for students to achieve scientific literacy. To ensure the goal that curricula have for scientific literacy, textbooks now address NOS. A new framework, the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA), has been developed to give a holistic overview of NOS. The FRA to NOS framework shall be used in this study to analyze NOS in French, American, and Lebanese textbooks used in Lebanese schools. There has been research conducted on analyzing American and Lebanese textbooks; however, to this day, no French textbooks (published in France) have been analyzed, used in Lebanon or elsewhere. The purpose of this study is to investigate the representation of NOS in grade 6 textbooks published by American and French publishers using the expanded FRA framework for NOS and compare the foreign textbooks to the Lebanese textbook. Following an inter-rater reliability test, three American, three French, and the Lebanese grade 6 textbooks were read in their entirety and analyzed. The frequency and percentage of representation of each NOS category was counted and calculated, in addition to the quality of representation. First, it was found that in American textbooks, all NOS categories were represented, except for the political power structure category. The categories under the social-institutional aspects were the ones with the highest frequencies of high-quality representation. Second, it was found that the French textbooks had many NOS categories unrepresented, except for Hachette’s Sciences et Technologie, which had all categories represented. Indeed, Hachette’s Sciences et Technologie stood out amongst all textbooks as it had the most high-quality representations. Third, the Lebanese textbook had four unrepresented categories, which were mostly from the social-institutional aspects. Finally, while American textbooks tend to have the highest number of occurrences for representation, the French textbooks tend to have higher percentages for high-quality representation. The Lebanese textbook had the highest occurrences for the knowledge category amongst all textbooks, but it was rarely represented in high-quality. The results of this research can be used by Lebanese schools in their choosing of textbooks to ensure equitable education in all classrooms. Furthermore, this study adds to the Vygotskian sociocultural theory, as new knowledge is gained on French textbooks.