THE NEED FOR INQUIRY-BASED NATURAL SCIENCE TEXTBOOKS IN THE SPANISH PRIMARY EDUCATION

Many authors agree that inquiry-based, active and experiential learning methods give better results in science learning. This information is often given and showed to the students of the Degree in Primary Education in the Spanish Universities during their Science Education lessons. The aim is to induce pedagogical changes in the next generation of teachers to improve child’s science learning. However, the common practice in the Spanish schools is to use the textbooks as the main resource and guideline for the teaching-learning process in class, included natural science. When the new generations of teachers start their professional careers in the schools, they also get adapt to this practice that is routinely followed. Because many textbooks used nowadays for natural science teaching in the Spanish Primary Education very often use a traditional pedagogical approach based on a direct transmission of the contents, memorization and evaluation, the desired pedagogical change is not taken place in a great extent. Quite often these new teachers argue the lack of time for inquiry-based natural science lessons, because they additionally have to “finish the book”.

In order to advance with an inquiry-based natural science learning process in the Spanish Primary Education we propose the need of new textbooks with lessons oriented to this type of educational methodology. This strategy will definitively help teachers to combine both the use of textbooks and the introduction and development of scientific concepts and skills necessary for students to investigate, discover and understand their world.

In the present work we make a comparison between the approaches of the Spanish Natural Science textbooks used in Primary Education and other inquiry-based Natural Science textbooks commonly used in other countries like United States. We have focused specifically on certain topic such as plants, animals and human nutrition.