content analysis of activities of the emirati science textbooks for the fifth grade in light of science process skills
Similar to several other countries, the United Arab Emirates places a high value on the use of science textbooks in the process of teaching and learning science. Therefore, the content of science textbooks must always be evaluated and analyzed in light of scientific knowledge and skills. Providing science process skills in the activities of science textbooks is essential and has a significant role in pushing students toward balanced scientific knowledge because attention to skills is a tool that enables the student to succeed in understanding the nature of science. However, based on the literature, there is a scarcity of scientific studies at the level of the United Arab Emirates in analyzing the activities of Integrated Science Textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education in light of the basic and integrated science process skills. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the level of the representation of basic and integrated science process skills in the inquiry activities of the Emirati Integrated Science Textbooks for the fifth grade. This study used content analysis as a descriptive-analytical method. In fact, content analysis is a multidimensional approach to understanding a given text's different meanings or dimensions. Therefore, content analysis is no less critical than the content itself. To ensure the reliability of the analysis process, another analyst analyzed the relevant activities, then the agreement coefficient between the analyst and the researcher was calculated, and the value expressed an almost perfect agreement in the analysis process. The study's results indicated an imbalance in the representation of basic and integrated science process skills in the analyzed activities, where some skills were less represented than others. Therefore, the researcher offered some recommendations to the designers and developers of the Integrated Science Curricula in light of the study's results, intending to draw attention to focus more on the representation of the science process skills in the inquiry activities of the Emirati Integrated Science Textbooks for the fifth-grade. (Author’s abstract)