An Comparative Study of Articulation on Science Textbook Concepts and Extracted Concepts in Learning Objectives Using Semantic Network Analysis - Focus on Life Science Domain -

Abstract

Whether textbooks faithfully reflect the curriculum contents is an important educational issue. The previous studies on the textbooks did not analyze the relationship described in the textbooks or the structure. In this regard, this study aims to analyze how the concept of life science area in the elementary school science textbooks developed on the basis of the 2009 revised curriculum is linked. In addition, it seeks to analyze how the concept presented in the learning content achievement standards of the curriculum is connected to other concepts. Towards this end, the conceptual linkage of eight units in the life science domain of elementary school science textbooks based on the 2009 revised curriculum was analyzed. The contents of the life science domain in the science textbooks were analyzed through a semantic network analysis, and the semantic network on the concept linked to the one described in curriculum's learning objectives was also analyzed. The results are as follows:1) It will be difficult for students to understand the concept due to the complexity of the semantic network resulting from a number of concepts. 2) The curriculum's learning objectives presented in the curriculum are not faithfully reflected in the textbooks. 3) The textbooks are described on the basis of specific curriculum's learning objectives. Based on the findings of this study, the number of concepts described in the elementary school science textbooks needs to be significantly reduced so that the concepts can be meaningfully linked to each other.

Alignment of Concepts of Meiosis Among Curriculum, Textbooks, Classroom Teaching and Assessment in Upper Secondary School in Republic of Korea

“…After thus reorganizing and selecting the concepts, we visualized each of the semantic networks as a 1-mode network, organized for curriculum, textbooks, classroom teaching and assessment. On the other hand, each was visualized as a 2-mode network in order to analyze the alignment across curriculum, textbooks, classroom teaching and assessment (Jeong et al, 2019;Kim & Kwon, 2016). Table 1 provides the frequency and example of the eigenvector centrality of concepts used in the curriculum network in Figure 1.…”

“…It seems to be due to teachers' intentions to teach as many concepts as possible, although there is a possibility that the various related concepts are used in class to explain the contents of the presented curriculum (Jeong et al, 2010). However, presenting a large number of concepts to students is likely to be a distraction from learning process (Kim & Kwon, 2016). Therefore, it seems that there is a need to establish guidelines for a desirable degree to which the concepts presented in the curriculum are taught (Jeong et al, 2010;Kim et al, 2009).…”

“…SNA enables visual text analytics by expressing hidden structures, based on an analysis of connected forms shared between the concepts. It has an additional advantage in that the frequency of a particular concept's occurrence can be calculated to easily identify its role in the structural relationship of concepts (Doerfer & Barnett, 1994;Jang & Barnett, 1994;Kim & Kwon, 2016;. In this study, SNA was used to analyze the alignment of science concepts used in curriculums, textbooks, classroom teaching and assessment.…”

Semantic network analysis of the biotechnology domain in Iranian high school biology textbooks

“…The selected concepts were visualized using the NetMiner program. The networks of the four subdomains of the biotechnology domain of the Iran high school biology textbook were visualized as a 1-mode network, and the linkage analysis between the middle units was visualized as a 2-mode network (Kim et al, 2022;Kim & Kwon, 2016;Lim et al, 2021). Furthermore, by analyzing the networks of the top 20% of the appearance frequency, we analyzed how the main concepts are connected.…”