An Analysis of South African School Science Textbooks for Representations of Nature of Science

This chapter describes the research conducted in South Africa on the analysis of school science textbooks used in the middle school and high school phases on their portrayal of nature of science (NOS). Following a discussion on the place of NOS in current curriculum documents, it focuses on research findings on the analysis of high school textbooks used in Grade 10 Life Sciences and Physical Science, and Grade 9 Natural Science. From a methodological perspective, the chapter explicates on the procedure and frameworks that guided the analysis. It discusses some thoughts on the implications of the findings, and recommendations thereof. There was consistency in the degree of explicitness/implicitness with which the textbooks from the different publishers depicted NOS with only slight variation in the manner in which the NOS aspects were represented. In the South Africa education system, there is a strong focus on high-stakes summative assessment in the form of tests and examinations.