scientific literacy, natural science education, learning tasks, natural science textbooks

A learning task is one of the elementary tools that teachers employ to reach the goals in science education. This article deals with the analysis of learning tasks in selected natural science textbooks for the 5th grade, in particular the topic of water, and their potential to develop scientific literacy. The results show that the learning tasks, that would require more complex thinking skills, can be found in a limited number. Nonetheless, it is just the more complex learning tasks that stimulate, motivate and make more sense to pupils. The content of these tasks has inherently more potential to fully develop scientific literacy. In the article, we point out that there is a disproportion between these complex tasks and those which require only memorising of facts.

A learning task is one of the elementary tools that teachers employ to reach the goals in science education. This article deals with the analysis of learning tasks in selected natural science textbooks for the 5th grade, in particular the topic of water, and their potential to develop scientific literacy. The results show that the learning tasks, that would require more complex thinking skills, can be found in a limited number. Nonetheless, it is just the more complex learning tasks that stimulate, motivate and make more sense to pupils. The content of these tasks has inherently more potential to fully develop scientific literacy. In the article, we point out that there is a disproportion between these complex tasks and those which require only memorising of facts.