Analysis of high school textbooks about science literacy, misconceptions and redability electrochemistry

VI ABSTRACT ANALYSIS OF HIGH SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS ABOUT SCIENCE LITERACY, MISCONCEPTIONS AND READABILITY ELECTROCHEMISTRY (M. Sc. Thesis) Emel GÜNHAN GAZİ UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION SCDENCES May 2004 The purpose of this study was to analyse Turkish Minister of Education Publisher's, Canadian, American and French high school chemistry texbooks' electrochemistry sections about science literacy, misconceptions, and readability. All of the analyses in this study were made in electrochemistry sections of these textbooks. The textbooks that analyzed are public high school level textbooks in their countries. Only the American textbook particularly chose because it was asserted to be organized for constractivist approach. Another purpose of the study was to give suggestions to textbook writers and teachers. It was never aimed to compare these textbooks.vıı In the analyse of the science literacy part of this study, the five aim of science literacy were determined at first. Then, every fourth sentences in the electrochemistry sections' were marked. Each selected sentence was assigned to one of the five literacy aim. At the end, ranges of the aims in every textbook were calculated from the outcomes. Thus, twentyfive percent of every electrochemistry sections of the texbooks were analyzed. The section about misconceptions was replicated the research done by Sanger (1996). Firstly the misconceptions that were indicated before were determined. Then, four textbooks were analyzed for examples of statements or drawings that could be misinterpreted by students and could foster common student misconceptions in electrochemistry. FOG procedure was applied to test the readability level of the books. At the end of the analyses the textbook that was organized for the constructivist approach gave favourable results for only one of three analyse.