2022 Volume 63 Issue 2 Pages 381-398
The first purpose of this study was to attempt a classification based on Yoshida (2012) of the “questions” of observations and experiments in the 2019 approved elementary science textbooks by Company Y, and to clarify the characteristics of the “questions” by comparing them with the 2010 approved elementary science textbooks that Yoshida (2012) analyzed, as well as the 2020 approved lower secondary school science textbooks that Yamada et al. (2022) analyzed. The second purpose was to clarify the exploratory characteristics of the “questions” by classifying them based on the three perspectives of Yamada et al. (2021), namely “qualitative/quantitative,” “hypothesis setting” and “variable control.” The results of our findings yielded, the following three points:
(1) The total number of “yes/no”, “how+verb,” and “how/what+noun” questions in the 2019 approved elementary science textbooks by Company Y accounted for approximately 72% of the total
(2) Verifiable “questions” such as “how+verb” that ask about “change/state” and “means” had increased oxer the course of the decade, while “questions” that are difficult to verify such as “call” had decreased.
(3) Comparing the 2019 approved elementary school science textbooks with the 2020 approved lower secondary school science textbooks, the former has significantly more “yes/no” than the latter, and significantly less “how/what+noun” and “call.”
Furthermore, as a result of examining the relationship between the characteristic skills organized from the three perspectives of Yamada et al. (2021b) and “questions,” which was the second purpose of the study, the following three points were suggested.
(4) In the “qualitative/quantitative” perspective, there were significantly more qualitative “questions” in the “nature” of “how/what+noun”.
(5) In the “presence/absence of hypothesis setting,” significantly more “questions” that included hypothesis setting were found in “yes/no,” “how+verb,” and “what” formats.
(6) In the “with/without variable control” category, there were significantly more “questions” that did not include variable control in the “how/what+noun” and “how much” categories.
The applicability of the findings of this study to elementary school science textbooks from publishers other than Company Y, which were approved in 2019, remains to be examined in the future.
