Representation of Learning Outcomes Stipulated by the Intended Curriculum in Four Series of Chemistry Textbooks - Based on Legitimation Code Theory

Intellectual demands of learning outcomes in the intended curriculum have always been a concern across the field of chemistry education. Especially, the representation of those stipulated by the intended curriculum in chemistry textbooks has become a big issue for both chemistry curriculum studies and chemistry teaching. To address this issue, the concepts of semantic density (SD) and semantic gravity (SG), borrowed from Semantics and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), were employed in this study with the purpose of examining the degrees of complexity and abstraction of chemical knowledge under the topic ‘Common Substances’ in four series of chemistry textbooks, which were compiled in compliance with the national chemistry curriculum of the compulsory education (Grades 1-9) in China.

Based on the principles of Semantics/LCT, a new coding scheme was tailored to the current study to analyze the representation of 34 knowledge points in the four series of chemistry textbooks. Results show that these knowledge points are elaborated with less complexity while avoiding unnecessary abstraction in the four series of chemistry textbooks. Specifically, it was found that the overwhelming majority of the knowledge points are represented with low semantic density and high semantic gravity. Some specialties were also identified with individual series of chemistry textbooks. The implications of the results of this study are discussed for the effective representation of science (chemistry) knowledge in textbooks.

This is part of my 2022/2023 Summer Research Programme at the University of Macau, for which the principal investigator is Prof. Bing WEI. In this research, I mainly Conducted data analysis and drafted the results part of the paper. The journal article “Wei, B., Zhan, Z., Jiang, Z., & Yu, L. (2024). Representation of Learning Outcomes Stipulated by the Intended Curriculum in Four Series of Chemistry Textbooks: Based on Legitimation Code Theory. _Research in Science Education, 1-18. (SSCI)” is currently published.