Are Students Invited into Socioscientific Discussion? A Discourse Analysis of Science Textbooks

Abstract

The current study aims to examine whether science textbooks encourage students to participate in the discussion on socioscientific issues (SSI). Through social constructionist lens and applying the discourse analysis frameworks and tools, the linguistic features of SSI-related text in nine sets of science textbooks used by senior secondary (year 10-12) students in Hong Kong were examined. Through analyzing how different participants were represented, it was found that most human entities except unspecified groups of “some people” were excluded in most sample sentences. Abstract entities were activated as if they have agency on their own apart from human actions, and humans were represented as mostly participating in mental and verbal processes instead of material processes that bring about effects on other parties. There is also a lack of personalization in sentences that human agents were mentioned, while abstraction and collectivization of participants were commonly observed. It could be reasonably asserted that students as future citizens were disempowered through these SSI-related text segments, as the agency of individuals were downplayed and the victimizers responsible for the socioscientific problems were shielded from scrutiny. The current study calls for more fine-grained studies on the processes that shape citizens’ participation in SSI and the development of guidelines for proper representations of participants in SSI-themed learning materials.