A Comparative Study And Pedagogical Implications Of The New And The Old PEP Textbook Of Physics In Senior High School

As an indispensable material in the process of teaching,the textbook has constantly occupied a relatively important status.As one of the compulsory modules,the second textbook of physics in senior high school is a required curriculum content for all students and is the basic physical knowledge that they should learn.Firstly,this paper adopts the method of literature analysis to sort through the relevant information about the new and old textbooks and designs the whole research.Then,by utilizing the method of content analysis and comparative study,the new second textbook of physics in senior high school has been compared to the old one from three different aspects such as the concepts of textbook writing,content,and exercises in order to find out the similarities and differences between two textbooks.By comparing two textbooks,the following conclusions have been drawn:(1)From the aspect of the concepts of textbook writing,both the new curriculum standard and the old one are based on the curriculum concept to meet the developmental needs of all students.On this basis,the old curriculum standard concentrates on improving students’ scientific literacy while the new curriculum standard emphasizes the core literacy of physics.In addition,the selection and requirements of content in the new curriculum standard are more specific.(2)From the aspect of content,the new textbook has further enriched the number and the category of columns as well as the number of charts on the basis of the old textbook.In particular,the supplement of special columns such as “Questions” and “Review and Improvement”increases the proportion of exercises.But meanwhile,the new textbook decreases the ratio of cartoon charts.Besides,the new textbook divides the content of curvilinear motion into two chapters including projectile motion and circular motion and adjusts the arrangement of some specific contents.For instance,the new textbook exchanges the sequence of centripetal force and centripetal acceleration,which emphasizes that force is the reason that changes the state of motion of a object and helps the students to form the concept of force and motion.Then,the new textbooks retains most of the content in the old one,but still deletes some knowledge in junior high school and contents that are no longer required in the new curriculum standard.Moreover,it adds some contents about the manned space flight,space exploration,and time-space view of relativity.Eventually,the breath,depth and degree of difficulty of the new textbook is less than the old textbook.(3)From the aspect of exercises,the exercises in the new textbook and the old one is similar,but the quantity of exercises in the new textbook is larger than the old one and the exercises are more difficult.Then,by comparing five factors affecting the difficulty of exercises,it can be found out that the“background” and “openness” of the new textbook is inferior to the old one while “calculation”,“inference”and “content of knowledge” are superior to the old one.Finally,there are some pedagogical implications based on the research conclusions:(1)The teaching objectives should be made reasonably in accordance with the curriculum standard.(2)The rich teaching resources in the textbook need to be made full use of.(3)The teaching methods should be chosen flexibly according to the content of the textbook.(4)The teachers ought to attach more importance to the exercises in the textbook.