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How the Curriculum Guideline “The Cell Is to Be Studied Longitudinally” Is Expressed in Six Israeli Junior-High-School Textbooks

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Abstract

The most recent science and technology curriculum for junior high school in Israel contains a new guideline stating that the cell topic is to be taught “longitudinally in conjunction with other study contents.” This guideline confers a change in teaching the cell topic and provides an opportunity to form meaningful relationships between biological phenomena at the macro level and their cellular explanations. Here, we examined the extent to which six textbooks, available for junior high schools in Israel, support this teaching approach. We found that the textbooks differ in how they express the guideline and that most of them do not support the new teaching approach to any significant extent. Moreover, the textbooks generally emphasize cells’ structure and pay less attention to the processes occurring in them. Our findings could shed light on students’ difficulties in comprehending the living cell and in correlating macroscopic phenomena with their cellular explanations.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Mrs. Yetty Varon for expert statistical analysis. AY is the incumbent of the Helena Rubinstein Career Development Chair.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Science Teaching, Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100, Rehovot, Israel

    Rachel Cohen & Anat Yarden

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  1. Rachel Cohen
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  2. Anat Yarden
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Correspondence to Anat Yarden.

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Cohen, R., Yarden, A. How the Curriculum Guideline “The Cell Is to Be Studied Longitudinally” Is Expressed in Six Israeli Junior-High-School Textbooks. J Sci Educ Technol 19, 276–292 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-009-9199-6

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