The relationship between the given and anticipated range of knowledge in textbooks
: a quantitative analysis of Japanese science textbooks from the 5th to 8th grades
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Medientyp:
E-Artikel
Titel:
The relationship between the given and anticipated range of knowledge in textbooks
:
a quantitative analysis of Japanese science textbooks from the 5th to 8th grades
Beschreibung:
How are terms given in the descriptions of knowledge in textbooks? In other words, how comprehensive are the concepts given in textbooks in terms of the system of knowledge that the textbooks are to convey? The “primary-secondary learning gap” has long been discussed in Japan. Many students suddenly have difficulties in understanding subjects when they enter junior high school. Despite the fact that textbooks are one of the most important learning instruments, the qualitative change in the content of textbooks has not been examined in light of the primary-secondary learning gap. In this paper, we show that there are clear gaps between primary school textbooks and secondary school textbooks in the ways of description of knowledge. We picked up science textbooks from grades five to eight, that is, the fifth and sixth year of the primary school and the first and the second year of the secondary school. We focused on terms that represent concepts and evaluated how their occurrences in textbooks suggest readers to anticipate the potential range of terms, by extrapolating the text size to infinity. We used the large number of rare events (LNRE)models. We observed that, in primary school textbooks, terms are on average used much more frequently. We also revealed primary school textbooks are written in a self-sufficient way in terms of concepts while secondary school textbooks make readers anticipate there are more terms than those given in the texts. This may well be one of the causes of primary-secondary learning gap.