An Analysis of Data Activities and Instructional Supports in Middle School Science Textbooks

A critical component of science and math education is reasoning with data. Science textbooks are instructional tools that provide opportunities for learning science content (e.g. facts about force and motion) and process skills (e.g. data recording) that support and augment reasoning with data. In addition, the construction and design of textbooks influence the instructional strategies used in the classroom to teach science. An analysis of science textbooks provides a window to examine what students are being taught about data and how they are being taught. We had two objectives for the present study: (1) to examine opportunities for reasoning with data and (2) to examine to what extent these activities are aligned with instructional supports derived from evidence-based learning strategies. We conducted a descriptive study in which we examined how 20 Middle School science textbooks, across 731 activities, presented opportunities for reasoning with data. Our results demonstrate that although half of activities in textbooks included data, very few of these activities provide opportunities to learn how to record, analyze, and interpret data and the activities rarely provided instructional supports based on evidence-based learning strategies. Our analysis suggests that science textbooks provide limited support for reasoning with data.