| Although helping students to achieve an adequate understanding of the nature of science has been a consistent goal for science education for over half a century, current research reveals that the majority of students and teachers have naive views of the nature of science (Abd-El-khalick & Akerson, 2004; Bianchini & Colburn, 2000). This problem could be attributed not only to the complex nature of science, but also to the way the nature of science is presented to students during instruction. Thus, research must be conducted to examine how the science is taught, especially in science textbooks, which are a major instructional resource for teaching science.;A scoring procedure was used that resulted in good to excellent intercoder agreement with Cohen's kappa (k) ranging from .63 to .96. The findings show that the patterns of presentation of the four themes of the nature of science in the four high school biology textbooks are similar across the different locations of data, text, figures, and assessments. On the other hand, the pattern of presentation of the four themes is diverse by the publishing company. Some high school biology textbooks reflect a more reasonably balanced treatment of the four themes of the nature of science than other textbooks. The authors of most high school biology textbooks are attempting to convey an idea of biology and how scientific enterprise works by engaging students in investigations and revealing the thinking process of scientists.;In addition to the quantitative analysis, a qualitative analysis was undertaken in an attempt to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of science in high school biology textbooks. A more experienced textbook analyst and nature of science researcher helped to confirm the conclusions by the investigator, who also examined the data sources from the introductory chapters of the biology textbooks. Examination of the first chapter of high school biology textbooks, using a qualitative analysis, reveals that each textbook describes the nature of science in a considerably different manner. While the approaches and emphases used to present scientific enterprise are remarkably different in each textbook, generally high school biology textbooks present several common topics, such as characteristics of life, scientific methods, biological issues, and tools used in science. Most of the high school biology textbooks present a narrow view of scientific methods as well as science, technology, and society. The qualitative/case study approach provided an insightful perspective of how science is presented to the user.;Given the importance of textbooks on teaching and learning of science, it is recommended that teachers be informed of the findings of this study in order for them to understand how the first chapter presents the nature of science, which in turn may influence how they select biology textbooks and supplement this content Further, textbook publishers should also be informed of the results of the research in order to design future textbooks and materials to include a more authentic view of the nature of science.;The aim of this study was to conduct a content analysis of the first chapter of four high school biology textbooks, which typically discusses "What is science?" and "What is biology?" This research used a content analysis technique to analyze the four high school biology textbooks, using a conceptual framework that has been used often for science textbook analysis. This conceptual framework consists of four themes of the nature of science: (a) science as a body of knowledge, (b) science as a way of thinking, (c) science as a way of investigating, and (d) the interaction of science, technology, and society. For this study, the four-theme-framework was modified to incorporate descriptors from national-level documents, such as Science for All Americans (AAAS, 1990) Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS, 1993) and the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996), as well as science education research reports. |
