Textbooks: a tool to support geosciences Learning

Abstract

Textbooks are a tool to support learning in most disciplines. Its supremacy is unquestionable in the school environment compared to other means of disseminating knowledge. This function is especially important in the pre-university levels of any educational system which probably constitutes the main tutorial tool in the classroom. The main aim of this chapter consists of making an initial diagnoses of the situation in which geological contents are in textbooks in compulsory education. Firstly, textbooks for Earth Science education will be analyzed; then, the geological contents in textbooks will be studied, the amount and quality of the information given to students will be examined in depth and, in particular, the contents of textbooks in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Brazil will be analyzed. Finally, recommendations are provided on the basis of solving FAQ's on geosciences textbooks. The literature review, these research carried out and the results obtained through this investigation, allow to consider this study a sound contribution to the field of Earth Science Didactics. It underlines the need to produce curricular official documents and Science textbooks with adequate geoscientific contents to help develop the geoscience culture of students.