Elementary School Chemistry Textbooks. Text-difficulty Evaluation

Abstract

Text-difficulty analysis belongs to traditional qualitative research methods. School textbook analysis represents an important discipline, the results of which are applied by successful publishers to produce better textbooks for the market. In this study the authors focus on chemistry textbooks for lower secondary schools. Since these textbooks have not been analysed yet, the present article covers an unexplored area. Biology and geography lower-secondary textbook analyses are presented for comparison. The authors found out that the overall textbook difficulty exceeds recommended values making the textbooks inadequate to pupils' perception level. This may well be one of the reasons of low popularity of the school subject. Authors further discuss pros and cons of the chosen methodology and suggest further necessary steps in this field.