Abstract:

Improving the teaching needs to determine the characteristics of various elements of learning material (ELM). The article considers the problem of measuring didactic complexity of the conceptions, statements and texts, which are used at school. The methodological basis of the research are the works by V. S. Avanesov, B. Bitinas's, G.V.Glass, J.C.Stanley, V.P. Bespalko, Ya.A. Mikk, I.V. Oborneva.

The didactic complexity of ELM is offered to be understood as the characteristic which is proportional to the time needed to assimilate the information presented in this ELM. Uniform criteria for estimation of the scientific conceptions complexity on various natural science subjects are developed and the method of the complexity assessment of the statements (laws, principles, postulates) based on abstraction scale is offered. For an assessment of ELM complexity it is necessary to provide the teacher who, explaining the essence of statement, describes the corresponding situation and gives the definitions to all terms used.

The offered method consists in the following:
1) to create the text including the formulation of the law, the description of the situation (the phenomenon, the experiment, etc.) corresponding to this law and the definitions of the science terms used;
2) to compile a dictionary–thesaurus and to estimate the didactic complexity of the conceptions entering it;
3) to start a special computer program which analyzes the text and determines the conceptions quantity and their total complexity.

In case of large texts assessment it should be taken into account that the didactic complexity of the issues studied at school is determined by a variety and abstractness of the qualitative and quantitative models used. The developed estimation method of didactic complexity of the physics textbooks includes:
1) the determination of the physics complexity of the textbook summing up the complexity of the physical objects, phenomena, experiments, statements and theories;
2) the measurement of mathematical complexity of the textbook by counting the number of formulas (considering their complexity) and drawings presenting mathematical abstractions (a vector, power lines, graphs);
3) the calculation of the total index of the textbook didactic difficulty.

With the help of this method 16 Russian physics textbooks for school and university have been analyzed, their distribution within the characteristics space "physical complexity - mathematical complexity" has been studied.

For the determination of the didactic complexity of the textbooks on natural science disciplines the method of pair comparisons of various texts is used. The textbooks are compared according to the following characteristics:
1) the variety and abstractness of qualitative explanations, their isolation from everyday life;
2) the complexity of mathematical methods and models, the variety of solved quantitative tasks.

The Russian textbooks on nature study, geography, biology, physics, chemistry (21 textbooks) have been analysed, and their paired comparison with each other has been made. It is found that the chosen characteristics can be considered as independent; the correlation coefficient between them is equal 0,51. On the basis of the obtained data the distribution of school textbooks on physics, chemistry, biology, ecology within space of characteristics "complexity of qualitative models – complexity of quantitative models" is presented, their classification is made.

Keywords:

Conceptions, didactics, education, mathematical methods, nature sciences, textbook, training, qualimetry.