Rife with inaccuracies, poor readability and egregious errors, middle school science textbooks may be inhibiting students' learning and are due for vast improvement, according to a recent study out of North Carolina State University.
John Hubisz, a visiting professor of physics at NCSU, examined in detail 12 popular middle school physical science texts that currently reach about 80 percent of American middle school students. The books ranged from the latest editions to those that are 10 years old.
Some of the more humorous errors found by the study include a photograph of singer Linda Ronstadt described as a silicon crystal in the 1997 edition of "Exploring Physical Science," published by Prentice-Hall; a photo of the Statue of Liberty that appeared backwards in four separate editions of the same book; and the placement of the equator as far north as Texas in South-Western Educational Publishing's "Science Links."
"It's not so much the errors as it is the sheer number," Hubisz emphasized. "Students are not able to see any kind of continuity.... The thing is that [these books] don't teach science."
The Durham public school system does not use any of the books reviewed in the study. This year the system adopted Glencoe's "Science Voyages" series, but for the past five years it used Glencoe's "Science Interactions," a book which was harshly criticized in the report.
"If one were forced to choose a book to use in middle school, it is a sorry state of affairs that among the most used books in the country this one would have to be it," Hubisz wrote.
Schools in North Carolina order books from a list approved by the state textbook commission. Among Hubisz's criticisms were suggestions for reforming this system. He recommended having scientists look over the books for accuracy.
At the Durham School of the Arts, a public magnet school, the eighth graders currently use a high school text, but until last year, they used a Prentice-Hall book criticized in the study. Eighth-grade science teacher Alex Hill specifically remembers errors with the chemistry section, especially the gas laws.
"The overall difficulty with science textbooks is to be appealing enough, simple enough, but retain seriousness of content," Hill said. "That is difficult criteria for creating a book."
The report also criticizes the textbooks' poor readability, which it said results from an excess of writers, overseers and editors.
"You can't write a book like that," said Hubisz, explaining how multiple authors create a glut of information. "Kids have no way of determining what is important information and what is not."
Additionally, when reviewers contacted some of the people listed as authors of the textbooks, almost none of them would claim to be an "author" and some had no idea they were listed as such. And when contacted by reviewers, publishers said corrections had been made. But when the corrected texts were examined by the reviewers, in many cases more errors were found. Additionally, many teachers do not have access to these latest corrected editions.
The eight reviewers are members of the American Association of Physics Teachers, with backgrounds in physics and teaching experience ranging from middle to graduate school.
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