Abstract
Science education in China has undergone a new round of reform in recent years, emphasizing the development of students’ scientific literacy, of which the nature of science (NOS) is an essential component. Curriculum standards are the source of top-down curriculum reform, and the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China promulgated a new biology curriculum standard for general high schools in 2017 and revised in 2020, followed by those for junior high schools in 2022. This study aims to explore how NOS is presented in the reformed biology curriculum standards and whether there is coherence in NOS within and across the two curriculum standards. The study was conducted based on the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA) framework and visualized the links between the categories through Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA). The study observed that (1) the Chinese biology curriculum standards pay little attention to the social-institutional system of NOS as described by the FRA and (2) there is a certain degree of disengagement between the general and modular objectives of the biology curriculum standards on NOS.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.
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This study is financially supported by the Ministry of Education of Guangdong, China (“University Teaching Quality and Reform Project”).
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All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Qianqian Gao, Yi Cao, and Hongni Xie performed material selection. Gao and Cao completed all the data coding, and the epistemic network analysis was performed by Gao. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Gao, and all authors participated in the revision of the manuscript under the supervision of Xuefeng Li. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Gao, Q., Cao, Y., Xie, H. et al. Investigating the Nature of Science in Reformed Chinese Biology Curriculum Standards. Sci & Educ (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-023-00466-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-023-00466-z