抄録
The purpose of this study was to investigate trends and patterns in the questions of Lower Secondary School Science Textbooks published by Company A that was approved by the Ministry of Education in 2005. For this purpose, 508 questions were extracted and organized into a text database to analyze the method of questioning, as well as the contents of the questions. The questions were grouped into the following formats: “Short written answer,” “Long written answer,” and “Multiple choice answer.” Their contents were grouped into the following categories: “Scientific terminology,” “Calculations,” “Explanation of natural phenomena,” “Explanation of reasoning,” and “Figures and graphs.” The particular characteristics of the questions were examined, and two conclusions were drawn: (1) The long written answer format and the explanation of reasoning question content appeared less frequently in all questions; (2) Both Field 1 and Field 2 showed similar proportions of the explanation of natural phenomena, explanation of reasoning, and the question content categories of figures and graphs. The outcome of the analysis was compared with the trends and patterns in the questions of Ehime Prefecture’s Upper Secondary School Entrance Examinations. For the comparison, the Lower Secondary School Science Textbooks and Ehime Prefecture’s Upper Secondary School Entrance Examinations were synchronized based on the Japanese course of study. The questions of Ehime Prefecture’s Upper Secondary School Entrance Examination were extracted for this study from the study of Yamaoka (2010). The results show that many questions in Ehime Prefecture’s Upper Secondary School Entrance Examinations were closed questions. There were many “Calculations”, while there were few “Figures and graphs”.
