Knowledge and values in science textbooks concerning complexity in ecological systems and environmental problems: a cross-cultural study on secondary school manuals

The study was carried out within the European research project "Biology, Health and
Environmental Education for Better Citizenship" that joined 18 European and North-African countries. We report
here the methodology and some of the conclusions drawn from an analysis of science textbooks that considered
the topics ecology and environmental education (EEE). Grids were conceived with the aim of revealing value
systems conveyed by the exposition of the content and by images. We concentrate on the explicit/implicit
presence of two of the four conceptions that have been investigated: complex vs. linear and relation of humans
respect to nature in relation to the sub-topics ecosystems and ecological cycles and pollution. Dogmatism,
scientism, and non-historical approach were also checked. The findings from the analysis of the sample of seven
Italian textbooks for lower and higher secondary school are illustrated and compared with those obtained in
Morocco.
The outcomes of the analyses show that ecology is not oversimplified, and structural descriptions appear
more articulate than the relational and the dynamical ones. The view of ecology communicated by most of the
textbooks is rather superficial and incomplete under many respects that we specify. The topic pollution is treated
in a fragmentary way, as a "call of attention" added to the description of the environmental components or in
Cards included in the chapters concerning the human body. The higher secondary school manuals do not contain
more and more articulate information nor they more deeply account concrete cases, familiar to students'
experience. Regardless of cultural differences and the diversity in the environmental contexts, the examined topics