The role of Ethiopian secondary school biology textbooks for global understanding

Abstract

This article investigates the role of Ethiopian secondary school (grades 9 to 12) biology textbooks in promoting students' global understanding. This study is grounded on Ethiopia's education policy aims and general education's curriculum framework objectives to prepare globally informed citizens. The study used mainly quantitative content analysis techniques. All pages in the textbooks were used as units of analysis. The findings of the study indicated that the textbooks represented some of the dimensions of global issues and perspectives in varied degrees of integrations, which have a potential to promote students' global understanding to some extent. However, the findings show that the dimensions of global issues and perspectives were not integrated comprehensively in the textbooks. The findings also revealed that there is no independent global education framework in Ethiopian education system, which can serve as standard to evaluate the adequacy of integration in the textbooks. It is proposed that education systems should develop a national global education framework that can serve as a standard for curriculum practitioners.

Keywords

• Global understanding
• Global issues
• Global perspectives
• Biology textbooks
• Ethiopia