ANALYSIS OF CYCLE 2 SCIENCE TEXTBOOKS REPRESENTATION OF SCIENTIFIC LITERACY AND READABILITY LEVEL

For over half a century, textbooks have played a decisive role in teaching and learning activities. In today’s classrooms, textbooks serve as primary teaching instruments and greatly influence how knowledge is delivered and communicated. With the development of the society, a majority of teachers use textbooks to guide their instruction. On the other hand, readability of textbooks is an important construct for both educators and textbook authors. Finding the right fit between the students’ reading ability and the text difficulty is an important and challenging task for teachers. This study is about how scientific content is presented and represented in Cycle 2 science textbooks of Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) schools. The purposes of this study are therefore to identify the aspects of Scientific Literacy (themes) that are emphasized by the science textbooks used in Grades (6 9) and to identify the readability level of these science textbooks. Two types of samples and sampling procedures were involved in the present study. The first sample was that the textbooks of Science Focus for the United Arab Emirates (Student version), 2 edition by Whalley, Phillips, Monckton, Roberson, Mayers, Brown, and Naville (2009) were the focus textbooks of this study to be analyzed and the second sample pertains to 200 students drawn purposely from two of Al-Ain Cycle 2 government schools covering grades 6, 7, 8, and 9 during the 2013/ 2014 academic year. The textbooks were selected for their content and readability analyses whereas the students were selected to identify their actual reading ability.