Nature of Science in General Chemistry Textbooks

Abstract

Research in science education has recognized the importance of nature of science (NOS) within history and philosophy of science (HPS) perspective. The objective of this study is to evaluate representation of NOS in 75 general chemistry textbooks (published in USA) based on nine criteria. Depending on the treatment of the criteria, textbooks were classified as: No mention (N), Mention (M), and Satisfactory (S). Most textbooks in this study provided little insight with respect to the nine criteria used for evaluating NOS. Percentage of textbooks that were classified as No mention (N) ranged from 44 (Criterion 1) to 94.7% (Criterion 8). Despite this, some textbooks provided good examples based on HPS, and the percentage of textbooks that were classified as Satisfactory (S) ranged from 1.3 (Criterion 2) to 17.3% (Criterion 1). These examples show that although presentation of NOS is not the major objective of general chemistry textbooks, some of them inevitably refer to the historical record and thus provide guidelines for future textbooks that align with the reform documents. Some textbooks go into considerable detail to present the atomic models of Dalton, Thomson, Rutherford, Bohr and wave-mechanical. However, the most important aspect of these presentations is that they explicitly do so in the context of the tentative nature of scientific theories (Criterion 1). This is a clear illustration of how the history of chemistry can facilitate the understanding of NOS. Similar evidence based on various historical episodes on other criteria is reported. It is concluded that in most cases the history of chemistry is ‘inside’ chemistry and in order to facilitate understanding, textbooks need to interpret within a NOS perspective.