Browsing by Subject "Qualitative Content Analysis"

Tiivistelmä - Referat - Abstract The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of sustainability education in Chinese primary education. Society has attained unprecedented level of development as a result of science and technology, while simultaneously there is a growing call for a sustainable future. Due to the huge population and lack of awareness of sustainability in the Chinese context, education plays an important role in facilitating the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that are needed to address the current sustainability challenges. More importantly, in China, sustainability education has not been popularized in primary and secondary schools, and various obstacles and barriers remain to the implementation of sustainability education in primary schools. The study focuses on analysing the connections between the newly published national curriculum standard in 2022 and 12 science textbooks currently used in Chinese primary schools. Throughout the research, the sequence of science textbook contents relevant to sustainability education is analysed to identify the specific teaching and learning contents, within textbooks. Qualitative content analysis and descriptive analysis are conducted to systematically describe the national curriculum standard and textbook contents related to sustainability education. Meanwhile, Python will also be used as a tool to deal with word frequency. The research will result in a theory-based model to show how sustainability education is integrated and worked in Chinese primary science education textbooks. The model is represented as a Chinese knot, representing relations of 13 elements of the learning contents and 4 core competencies. Chinese knots are traditionally believed to indicate a promising future, which also coincides the concept of sustainable development. Additionally, research-based suggestions will be discussed regarding sustainability education in Chinese primary education.