Organisms Appearing in Japanese and Korean Elementary School Science Textbooks – A Preliminary Study –

抄録

Similarities in the science curricula between Japan and Korea have been frequently pointed out. The purpose of the present study was to compare the organisms appearing in elementary science textbooks used in Japan and Korea and identify their similarities and differences in the contents from the viewpoint of biology education for biodiversity. In Korea, there is only one series of science textbooks for the third grade to the sixth grade students published by the government. On the other hand, there are 6 series of science textbooks for the third grade to the sixth grade students published by private publishers in Japan; so, we selected the leading one from among them for this study. The organism names appearing in these textbooks from both countries are mostly species names, but sometimes genus, family or order names. The number of the organism names in Korean textbooks is almost twice as large as that in Japanese textbooks. In both textbooks, most organisms are “higher” plants and “higher” animals: there are 7 protists, 1 lichen, 61 plants and 65 animals in Japanese textbooks and 2 protists, 2 fungi, 111 plants and 115 animals in Korean textbooks.