Examining the Changes in Representations of Nature of Science in Chinese Senior High School Chemistry Textbooks

This paper aimed to examine the changes in the representations of nature of science (NOS) in Chinese senior high school chemistry textbooks under the influence of the new curriculum ideas. The study was conducted based on an analytical framework in which the aspects of NOS, the approaches to address NOS, and the content relation of NOS aspects were involved. Two series of the new and old chemistry textbooks of required course modules were selected as analysis targets. The results revealed that chemistry textbooks paid more attention to classical views of NOS than contemporary views of NOS. The aspects of NOS were unevenly presented in different chapters of textbooks. The new textbooks covered the NOS aspects more comprehensively and frequently than the old ones. Regarding the approaches, the implicit approach was dominant. Compared with old ones, the proportions of the explicit-reflective and historical-explicit-reflective approaches have increased in new textbooks, but were still not high. Lastly, the content relation of NOS aspects were more of content-embedded than content-generic both in new and in old textbooks. At the end of this paper, the implications of the findings and the suggestions for the further studies were discussed.