2021 Volume 62 Issue 3 Pages 128-139
In order to realize Society 5.0, an intelligent and futuristic society, a new form of science education is required in Japan. In the United States, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) have been published and the STEM Law has been enacted. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) promotes education reform in order to maintain and develop international competitiveness in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. In this study, in order to extract suggestions for education reform in Japan, we analyzed six types of biology textbooks from three textbook companies with high market shares in the United States. We investigated how NGSS changed biology textbooks. It became clear that textbooks in the United States are divided into two types: those that are greatly influenced by NGSS, and those that are not. The influential textbooks incorporate many STEM activities. In this study, we analyzed the teacher’s edition of these textbooks. As a result, we discovered to what extent the new textbooks incorporate engineering and technological content, scientific and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts which are the core elements of NGSS.
