Abstract

RUIZ ZUNIGA, Marcela; MENESES AREVALO, Alejandra  and  MONTENEGRO MAGGIO, Maximiliano. Curriculum coherence and opportunities to learn Science. Ciência educ. [online]. 2014, vol.20, n.04, pp.955-970. ISSN 1516-7313.  https://doi.org/10.1590/1516-73132014000400012.

We obtain curriculum coherence between opportunities to learn scientific skills offered in a Chilean textbook and those offered in the classroom about the concept of force in a fifth grade classroom. We performed a discourse analysis of the lesson unit and the classroom activities to obtain content matrices for the concepts involved and the scientific skills promoted. To measure the curricular coherence we used the Porter index. Our results show that the textbook greatly promotes observation (24.2%), whereas data management is the least promoted (0.95%). In the classroom, content presentation predominates (66.8%), whereas hypothesis analysis is the less favored (1.6%). The Porter index obtained between the textbook and the classroom activities was 0.360, whereas between the textbook and the national curricula was 0.267. Our results show that both the textbook and the classroom activities offer low opportunities to develop scientific skills to the students.

Keywords : Learning; Scientific Skills; Curricular Coherence; Scientific Literacy.