Biological Terms in Science Textbooks Used in Compulsory Education in Japan

Abstract

The author has been researching effective ways of implementing biology education within compulsory education in Japan for many years. To serve as a basic reference for this work, an investigation into the usage of biological terminology in compulsory education science textbooks was performed. The definition of “biological terms” used in this paper includes not only technical terms for biology, but also words related to biology that are also used in daily conversation. The investigation includes the generation of a comprehensive list of biological terms from all the approved, commercially-available science textbooks used in compulsory education, and notation of how many textbooks each of the terms is used in at each grade level (a maximum of six textbooks for elementary school or five for lower secondary school). This paper outlines the results of that investigation.